Catholic Apologetics on Catholic Truth - Stem Cell Research
1. Why is the Catholic Church against stem cell research?
The Catholic Church is not against stem cell research in most cases, it is against using stem cells from certain sources.
2. What stem cells does the Church support using?
The Catholic Church supports using stem cells taken from adults, umbilical cords (provided the umbilical cord is not obtained by an abortion), or natural miscarriages.
3. What stem cells is the Church against using?
The Church is against using embryonic stem cells. These stem cells come from embryos that are five to seven days old. The only way to extract these stem cells is to extract them violently from the embryo, which kills it.
4. But embryonic stem cell research shows the most promise.
That is not true. Adult stem cell research is 20 to 30 years ahead of embryonic stem cell research and actually holds greater promise. There are 98 different diseases that can be treated using umbilical cord and adult stem cells, which the Church approves of using. Currently there is no scientific evidence where embryonic stem cells have been used successfuly in animal trials. It has actually been discovered that embryonic stem cells used in research end up generating tumors in the animals and do not assimilate into the body. Embryonic stem cells are so energetic that they are hard to control and manipulate.
5. Isn't using embryonic stem cells is against the law?
As of November, 2004 there is no law or regulation against destroying human embryo for research purposes. President George W. Bush banned the use of federal funds to support embryonic stem cell research created after August 2001, but it is not illegal. Anyone using private funds is free to pursue it.
6. Cloning embryos for therapeutic reasons is fundamentally different from cloning them for reproductive reasons.
Both cloning practices are basically the same, the only difference lies in the purpose for each. The same steps are used to create each one. It should be noted that neither practice is approved by the Catholic Church.
7. Somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) is different from cloning.
Not true. The process for SCNT is the same as for cloning: you are taking the nucleus from the cell and transferring it into the egg.
8. SCNT allows tissues or organs to be produced without having to clone an embryo.
Not true again. In current research we cannot make tissues and organs directly. We must always first clone an embryo and then destroy it for tissue.
9. Frozen embryos may one day be discarded, so that makes it allowable to violate and destroy them.
The inviolability of an embryo doesn't depend on whether it is trapped in liquid nitrogen or not. This is comparable with children being premanently locked in a school house through no fault of their own and harvesting organs from them, causing their death.
10. Every cell in the body has the potential to become an embryo, so according to the Catholic Church when we wash our hands we are killing life.
This argument ignores the basic difference between a regular body cell and one whose nuclear material has been fused with an unfertilized egg cell resulting in an embryo. Skin cells will give rise to more skin cells when it divides, but only an embryo will give rise to the entire adult organism. Only embryos are potential adults.
SOURCES
October 14, 2004 issue of The Florida Catholic, page A9.