Session to provide facts on stem cell research

Plans in this year's New York State budget for public funding of embryonic stem cell research are under fire from Catholics. To further understanding of the issue, the New York State Catholic Conference has invited Brother Daniel Sulmasy, OFM, to address the science, ethics and politics of stem cell research.

A Franciscan friar, Brother Sulmasy also holds doctoral degrees in medicine and philosophy. On May 19, he will speak at a Stem Cell Research Leadership Training Day at the Carondelet Hospitality Center in Latham.

The Catholic Conference advocates for the state's bishops on public policy issues.

Budget proposal

While the Catholic Church advocates research using adult stem cells, it condemns embryonic stem cell research, which destroys human embryos. The new state budget proposes that $600 million of taxpayer funds be allocated for research, including stem cell research on human embryos. According to Brother Sulmasy, that research could also involve human cloning.

"The supply of frozen embryos is so small," he explained,

"that any proposal for using embryonic stem cells almost automatically is going to involve the need for cloning and creating new embryos with a specific purpose of taking the stem cells out of them."

He would like to see public funding steered toward "morally acceptable" forms of research using adult stem cells taken from amniotic fluid, umbilical cord blood and bone marrow.

"'Adult' is something of a misnomer; it means anything but an embryo," he noted.

Adult cells

Adult stem cells have become a "standard of care" in cancers such as leukemia, said Brother Sulmasy, where a patient's own cells are taken from bone marrow and infused back into the body.

He also noted that bone marrow cells have been used to bolster cardiac muscle cells in heart attack victims, and that promising research is being done regarding adult stem cells' affect on genetic and metabolic diseases.

Brother Sulmasy sees little evidence that embryonic stem cells are any better than adult stem cells for the treatment of certain diseases and research into possible cures.

"There are very few reasonable scientific arguments for the necessity of this research for clinical purposes. The alternatives are there, in morally appropriate venues, and those should be pursued first," he said.

Who's human?

Destroying embryos for research, he said, has definite implications for the definition of what a human being is. The proposition that "we have value because we are human" is the "fundamental basis of all morality," he said.

Brother Sulmasy noted that "Roe vs. Wade," the seminal Supreme Court case that legalized abortion in the U.S., was settled "not on the status of the embryo, but on privacy.

"An official government sanction for the proposition that this human being isn't human, but is a bunch of cells, is tissue, is something that can be disposed of at will -- that's what's morally reprehensible" from the Catholic perspective, he stated. "Anybody who is concerned about human dignity and the protection of human beings anywhere ought to be concerned about this."

(Brother Sulmasy holds the Sisters of Charity chair in ethics at St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan, and is a professor of medicine and director of the Bioethics Institute at New York Medical College in Valhalla, NY.

"The OFM is a statement of who I am, and MD and Ph.D are descriptions of what I do," he said. He believes the future of bioethics belongs to people who are "dually degreed" as both scientists and philosophers.

"It gets harder and harder to be a philosopher who knows enough about medicine, or a [physician] who knows enough about philosophy to really do the best work that needs to be done in the field," he remarked.)

(The Stem Cell Research Leadership Training Day will be held May 19, 10:30 a.m.-2 p.m., at the Carondelet Hospitality Center in Latham. Attendance is free, and lunch will be provided. To register, call the Catholic Conference at 434-6195.)

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