Humane alternatives.(PUBLIC POLICY)(embryonic stem cell research)

AS the Senate prepared to vote on whether to fund research that destroys human embryos, some senators and journalists began to pay attention to newly proposed alternative courses of research. The president's bioethics council, chaired by Leon Kass, has considered four methods of obtaining stem cells that do not involve the destruction of human embryos.

Of those four methods, two have attracted the most interest. Council member and Stanford professor William Hurlbut proposes the creation of biological entities that could serve as sources of stem cells but would not be human organisms. These entities would be disordered growths, lacking the capacity to organize themselves and to direct their own development. Another proposal would "reprogram" somatic cells, such as skin cells, so that they could serve as sources of stem cells. In both cases, it is thought that the stem cells would have very similar properties to stem cells taken from human embryos.

There are practical concerns about these proposals. Hurlbut's proposal would have to be tried on animals before human beings: It would be necessary to establish that the researchers could reliably create non-embryonic entities, as opposed to seriously disabled embryos. It would also have to be established that research would not involve the exploitation of women for their egg cells (a problem that is equally present in stem-cell research involving human cloning). Whether either approach is feasible is not yet known. But in principle, these research strategies deserve support. They could lead us to greater medical knowledge, and to cures, without injustice. If it is possible to yield the therapeutic benefits promised by embryonic-stem-cell research without killing any embryonic human beings, everyone should be able to see the value of following this non-divisive path.

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