Comment: Does anyone else see the moral/ethical dilemma of creating
and destroying 35 viable human embryos to save 1 human? Even the argument that
the two embryonic lines might lead to cures for disease down the road is on
shaky ground due to the fact that embryonic stem cell research has yet to
produce a single successful treatment. On the other hand, adult stem cells
(like those from the umbilical cord blood) don’t require destroying human life
and have 70+ successful treatments to their names.
Each of the other 35 embryos should have been
given a chance to be born, a chance to be given a name, a change to be loved.
Not destroyed as if they were simply lab rats. There are organizations that
would have taken those embryos and attempted to implant them in mothers who
couldn’t have children of their own and who would have given them a chance at
life. If that one boy’s life was worth creating 36 embryos to save his, then
isn’t each of those babys’ life worth giving them a chance to have one instead
of being sent off for research.
One day will will look back on the 19th & 20th
century’s holocaust of destroying viable little humans in the same way we look
back on Hitler’s holocaust…with sorrow, shame, and a vow: “Never Again”.
Response: Thank you for your comment. Yes, many see the moral/ethical dilemma and we
did too.
to our three children, to the people that made Andy’s cure possible and to
others who might find hope and who might benefit from similar forms of
research. Medicine is about options and I do not feel obliged to believe that
the same force that endowed the discovery of medical treatments has intended us
to forgo their use. We know that medicine moves forward by sharing and telling these
types of stories.
I’m not a doctor and I’m not a priest, I’m the
father of a boy who was born with a hole in his immune system. I live in a
practical world of choices and I can speak for families like mine that face
life threatening conditions and have to make life changing decisions to find a
cure. Our solution relied on finding the genetic roots of the disease and this
is what gave us options to cure him.
In our case most of the embryonic cells
(blastocyst) had a well-defined genetic mutation inside a gene known as NEMO
that causes the immune system to fail; a terminal condition, not compatible
with life.
When we learned about the procedure that
involved in-vitro fertilization (IVF) and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis
(PGD) as an option to find a compatible sibling to use umbilical cord stem
cells to cure our son we found out that:
a) not many Latinos are registered as stem cell bone marrow donors.
pregnancy and that many more embryos are created that will ever become
children.
For Andy’s treatment we needed compatible cells
to replace the damaged ones and we faced the moral/ethical dilemma
straightforward. We consulted Andy’s doctors and 90% of them thought this
procedure could work. We consulted our family and friends, the majority are Catholic,
some Jewish and some Atheist and all of them had a positive response. We consulted Padre Toño, a Catholic priest who
is a friend of the family. He knew about Andy and what he was going through. He gave us a positive response and also
contacted some of his friends at the
response. My father consulted a catholic Archbishop in
“When caught between two wrongs, choose the lesser one”. We based our decision
knowing that the transplant procedure would work and that’s why we came to
Children’s Hospital Boston.
I agree that human embryonic cells are worthy
of esteem and respect and shall be handled with dignity and even more than all
of the other type of cells inside this planet. I don’t believe that human
embryonic cells are like a person, if they are, why haven’t I seen any
microscopes inside a church?
I don’t agree with the premise that the single
celled zygote should be given the same considerations as living persons. I do
not view the embryo as a human being, particularly when it’s inside a freezer. For
me the 36 embryos were a group of cells that as beautiful as they may look
(only through the lens of a microscope) are not a baby.
It’s a blastocyst in an early stage of
embryonic development before implantation (picture via Wikipedia). And
for me the miracle happens when the blastocyst attaches to the wall of the
uterus and performs implantation when connections between the mother and the embryo
occur and the different cells begin to form, including the umbilical cord. At
this stage the embryo cannot survive outside the mother. Science still can’t
explain that moment during implantation and I don’t think it will be able to do
so during my lifetime, only God knows what happens.
We decided to donate the embryos that carried
the NEMO disease for research because we know the researchers and we’re hoping
that with those cells they will be able to study the disease and find an easier
cure. We felt that it was morally justified to derive benefit from embryos
through medical research instead of relegating them to medical waste or to
donate them to another couple knowing they carried the disease.
Have you ever had a serious infection? How did
you feel? Did it hurt, was it uncomfortable? Multiply those feelings by 1,000
which is the number of days that Andy had to be in the hospital in a constant
battle against life threatening infections.
This has to do with disease and disability and
nothing else. I think that in our case love and hope gave us the answer. Not
all of the embryos had NEMO and not all of them were donated to research. We
have been blessed again with the arrival of another baby who is beautiful and
healthy, she was born April 15 and we know she doesn’t have NEMO.
I don’t think that we can say “never again” or ignore
this type of medical science because it will change things, it will push the
human race forward. If medical science offers the option to treat disease and
relief suffering, for me it’s deplorable and illicit to block its path, especially
when the pain and suffering affects children. Hope is part of the human
condition, that thing inside us that insists. In this case as in many more the morally
licit solution is to be able to swap healthy cells for damaged ones, to restore
health and life and to cure an incurable terminal disease like the one that
affected my son. Sick and disabled
people deserve the same type of scientific research that cured him. Millions of
people with chronic illnesses need hope, belief and desire to the ethical
progress of biomedicine.
