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Nov. 3, 2005
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Ethicist says media misleading
public on stem cells |
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Priest says church supports some stem cell research |
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| DISPELLING MYTHS — Fr. Tad Pacholczyk speaks about the "10 great media myths" of stem cells and cloning during a presentation to Catholics in the medical profession Oct. 18 in Milwaukee. (Catholic Herald photo by Sam Lucero) |
MILWAUKEE — A bioethicist and a neuroscientist, Fr. Tadeusz Pacholczyk said Oct. 18 the “average person on the street” is being misled by the mass media to believe someone is being cured by stem cells from embryos. That is false.” Fr. Pacholczyk later said the “number of diseases treated by embryonic stem cells is zero.”
Fr. Pacholczyk, director of education and staff bioethicist at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, spoke after the annual White Mass for Catholics in the medical profession at a dinner at St. Josaphat Basilica.
His lecture, presented with a video, was titled “Cutting through the Spin on Stem Cells and Cloning.” He addressed “10 great media myths,” including the one mentioned above.
Instead of embryo stem cells, thousands of people have been cured with the use of adult stem cells and umbilical cord stem cells, he said. He showed a list of diseases — from Hodgkin’s disease to sickle cell anemia — that have been cured by adult stem cells and umbilical cord stem cell transplants.
“We stand on the cusp of an era of cell regeneration, not due to embryo cells, but due to adult and umbilical cord cells, “he said.
A second myth, he said, “is stem cells only come from embryos.” Stem cells can come from embryonic germ cells from 5- to 9-week-old fetuses due to a miscarriage; from adult stem cells, the umbilical cord stem cells, placentas and amniotic fluid, from adult tissue and organ stem cells, from bone marrow, as well as nasal epithelium from neural stem cells.
“The latter can be very useful for spinal cord injuries,” he said.
While Christopher Reeves was active in promoting the use of embryos for stem cell research, adult stem cell research shows “tremendous promise for those who are paralyzed.”
“Cadavers, too, for up to 24 hours after a death, can be a source of stem cells,” he added.
According to Fr. Pacholczyk, a third myth is “the Catholic Church is against all stem cell research. The church will always be against embryonic stem cells because one has to disaggregate a human being to get the cells.”
However, the other stem cells mentioned are all looked upon favorably by the church. As early as the year 2000, he said at least 300 people with heart problems were successfully treated with adult stem cells. In addition, he cited a major case — that of a young girl, Gina Rigari. She suffered from a rare degenerative disorder of the nervous system called Krabbe’s Leukodystrophy.
“By using half of the cells she needed from umbilical cords and the other half from her own immune system she was kept alive and is in kindergarten today,” he said.
Fr. Pacholczyk said a sign of this degenerative disorder in infants is irritability and developmental delay. However, he said if the disease “is caught immediately when a child is born” the child can be saved.
Physicians and other medical professionals at the lecture applauded after Fr. Pacholczyk told of another success story. A pregnant mother, diagnosed with leukemia, refused to have an abortion, so her daughter was successfully born by a Cesarean section. The daughter’s umbilical cord stem cells were used to successfully fight the mother’s cancer.
“‘I gave life to her and she gave life back to me,’” Fr. Pacholczyk quoted the mother, who named her daughter Victoria Angel, as saying.
Another misconception regarding embryonic stem cell research is that it is against the law.
“There’s no law or regulation against destroying human embryos as long as you have your own dollars,” said Fr. Pacholczyk. He cited the case of Proposition 7l in California, which dedicated $3 million to promote the destruction of embryos and therapeutic cloning, which he said will take another $3 million just to manage and carry out.
A fifth myth regarding stem cells is that President George W. Bush created new restrictions on federal funding of embryo stem cell research.
“The fact is since 1996, President Clinton’s federal law prohibited the use of federal funds to pay for research to destroy human embryos,” he said. “However, later President Bush liberalized that federal policy.”
In society there are implications “that therapeutic cloning and reproductive cloning are radically different from each other. That, too, is a myth. The fact is both are alike,” said Fr. Pacholczyk.
In closing, he explained, a twin is actually developed from the somatic cell from a man, which needs a woman’s egg cell (occyte) to join.
“But you suck out the nucleus of the egg cell. They are forced to join into one. It divides and builds an embryo,” he said. So the inner mass cells are extracted and plated out to make a stem cell line.
“This is an incredible scheme to get rejection-proof cells. But I hope you see the exploitation to make identical twins by strip mining cells. It’s the worst kind of manipulation,” he emphasized.
Fr. Pacholczyk said there are two kinds of cloning. “In one, you destroy the embryo to harvest stem cells to make life; in reproductive cloning you implant the embryo into the uterus to cause a birth. I’m not suggesting reproductive cloning is moral,” he said.
Then there’s the myth Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT). It is different from cloning.
A myth related to the previous one is that by doing Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer “we can directly produce tissue and organs without having to clone an embryo. We cannot make tissues and organs directly. We first have to clone an embryo,” he said. SCNT was first used to clone the sheep Dolly in 1997, in Scotland.
According to Fr. Pacholczyk, there is also the argument or myth “every cell is an embryo cell. However, only embryos are embryos.”
Finally, there’s the myth that “because frozen embryos may one day end up being discarded by something, that makes it morally allowable to violate and destroy those embryos. That’s a powerful, seductive argument by pragmatic Americans,” said Fr. Pacholczyk. “The fact is the moral analysis on embryonic inviolability does not hinge on whether the embryo is trapped in liquid nitrogen (to preserve it) and might one day end up being discarded by somebody. Vast portions of the American public believe this is OK because embryos will be thrown away.”
When he talks to couples who ask him about the frozen embryos they have, he tells them they need to pay their bills to the lab to make sure their embryos are being protected by the liquid nitrogen.
In his video, Fr. Pacholczyk showed a black and white photo of an embryo — the size of a period, magnified thousands of times. The result resembled a small, fragile cluster of grapes, dusted with snow.
“The question is not whether they are so small,” said Fr. Pacholczyk of the embryos.” Isn’t this exactly what a young human being is supposed to look like? That is a scientific argument.
“This is a call to serious ethical discussion,” he said. “We need to regulate science because we are dealing with the genesis of new human beings, who are our sisters and brothers.” |
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