Noted bioethics professor LeRoy Walters spoke to a nearly full John B. Davis Lecture Hall about the ethical problems of human embryonic stem cell research on Tuesday.
Walters, a professor at the Kennedy School of Ethics at Georgetown University, served as a consultant with the National Bioethics Advisory Committee and to President Bush on the issue. His articles have appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Science and Nature and he is co-author of several books on the subject.
The lecture was entitled “The Ethics of Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research: An International Perspective.
After he gave scientific background and his presuppositions, Walters explained the five options for federal policy that he thought governments had regarding human embryonic stem cell research (ranging from the most conservative to the most liberal). He then made his recommendation, which fell in the middle of the spectrum: use human embryos only when “important scientific knowledge can be gained or new therapies may be able to be developed,” he advocated. Use them in a well-designed research program with public oversight and with the genetic parents’ consent.
Walter began on the conservative end with a view that permits neither the derivation nor the use of human embryonic stem cells in research.
“Derivation is the taking apart of the embryo and removing the inner cell mass,” he said. “The use would be taking the stem cell already derived somewhere else by someone else and doing research on it.”
Option two permits the use of already-derived stem cells from embryos not needed for reproduction, but does not permit the derivation of stem cells. President Bush supported this option last August, and President Clinton supported it during his presidency. Specifically, in Bush’s decision, stem cells which had already been derived could be used for research, but no more could be derived. This only pertained to research which is funded federally.
Option three would authorize both the use of stem cells and their derivation from embryos not needed for reproduction (like those keep in storage at infertility clinics).
“Our best estimate is that there are probably 100,000 leftover embryos frozen in the U.S. alone, which means there are probably 200,000-300,000 in the world,” Walters said.
Option four, Walters said, “crosses a significant ethical threshold.” This option consents to also the derivation of stem cells from embryos created for research purposes by means of in vitro fertilization. Under this option, people would specifically donate embryos for research, instead of researchers using leftover embryos from infertility clinics.
The last and most controversial option allows the cloning of embryos for research. Among the countries that adopted this option are China, the U.K. (pending an outcome of a court review), Israel, and 40 states in the U.S., since they do not have laws regarding stem cell research at all.
Walters also gave credit to Clinton and Bush for addressing this issue.
“Before them, in the Carter-Reagan-elder Bush administrations, they acted as if human embryonic research was a non-issue,” he said. During what Walters called the 15 years of neglect from 1979-1994, when Clinton voiced his view on the issue, research could only be done with private funding and no federal standards.
He also followed the evolution of the issue of the “unformed fetus,” beginning with Aristotle’s view that it does not have a soul comparable to a developed human’s, to the 1869 reversal of Catholic doctrine to the view that the fetus has a soul from the time of conception.
Walters ended the lecture by emphasizing that in this field of research there are always human research subjects.
“One thing we should never forget in human embryo research is that every single embryo can be traced back to a human egg which had to be retrieved from the body of a woman through surgical procedure,” Walters said. With the full attention of the audience, he continued. “Women are human subjects in this research, regardless of what you think about the moral status of human embryos.”
Walters’ lecture was the inaugural speech in the Engel-Morgan-Jardetzky Distinguished Lecture Series on Science, Culture and Ethics. Jim Engel ’50 and Bob Morgan ’50, in whose name the money for the series was donated, spoke briefly about the origins of the fund for the lecture series prior to the speech.
Jan Serie, Professor of Biology and Chair of the Steering Committee of the lecture series, was pleased with the first lecture.
“I was very impressed with Dr. Walters,” Serie said. “He interacted very well with the students and made a lot of connections while he was here. If series is as good as its inaugural speech, it’ll be first class.”
Serie said that Walters spent all of Tuesday at Macalester, going to classes and meeting with students and faculty.
“We didn’t want him to just fly in and speak and then fly out,” Serie said. “We wanted him to stay a day or two and talk to classes so students could get exposure to the subject and learn about his field.”
