Meanwhile: History's lessons for stem cell research
Meanwhile: History's lessons for stem cell research
Deborah Blum
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: August 1, 2006
MADISON, Wisconsin In vetoing legislation that would have supported medical research using embryonic stem cells, President George W. Bush described his decision as moral rather than scientific, an act of conscience opposed to the taking of the "innocent human life" represented by embryonic stem cells.
The president's veto appears to create an intractable problem for stem cell researchers and their advocates. How is the research to advance when national policy inhibits the work from being done? Discouraged proponents have suggested that the president's decision has the potential to keep American science locked in the past.
The past, however, seems to encourage a more optimistic outlook. Medical progress has stirred religious and moral objections throughout history - objections that were overcome as the benefits of medical advances became overwhelmingly obvious. In the 11th century, European church leaders warned monks that treating illness with medicine showed such a lack of faith in God that it violated holy orders.
An illuminating case study is the late 18th-century controversy over inoculation against smallpox. Condemned by clerics as both immoral and blasphemous, smallpox inoculation offers some surprising parallels to America's current impasse over stem cells.
The word "smallpox" once implied all the horror of a murderous infection against which people had little remedy. A 19th-century historian called it "the most terrible of all the ministers of death."
Smallpox's legacy of misery obsessed the English doctor Edward Jenner. Born in 1749, Jenner spent years hunting for ways to conquer, or at least prevent, the dread disease. He gathered anecdotal evidence from patients and strangers, including milkmaids, who appeared protected from smallpox by their exposure to a related, but milder, infection called cowpox. He also studied the folk medicine practice of inoculation, in which pus from smallpox pustule was rubbed into an opening scratched in the skin of an uninfected person.
Other doctors were also exploring the idea of inoculation, but Jenner went further, conducting experiments. He designed a procedure using fluid from cowpox lesions to inoculate against smallpox. His approach was untested, but Jenner believed it offered the potential to become "essentially beneficial to mankind."
The religious authorities of Jenner's day viewed smallpox inoculation as an affront to God and man. A widely published British sermon was titled "The Dangerous and Sinful Practice of Inoculation." American clergy warned that inoculation usurped God's power to decide the beginning and end of life.
Jenner responded with a risky demonstration of his idea. In 1796, the doctor persuaded his own servant to allow the man's 8-year-old son to be inoculated with cowpox material; two months later, Jenner exposed the child to smallpox.
The experiment was a success. Moreover, the child remained immune to smallpox even after the doctor exposed him to it a second time. The doctor himself, however, was reviled. Clerics denounced him as a tool of the devil. Newspapers ridiculed him. Even some of his medical colleagues questioned whether he might have gone too far.
In retrospect, one can easily imagine Jenner's brilliant idea sinking under the combined weight of moral antipathy and scientific disdain.
Instead, the doctor persevered and triumphed by doggedly gathering more evidence based on more inoculations. Fueled by his success, the practice spread, and smallpox rates plummeted. In time, the life-saving merits of inoculation eventually overwhelmed all doubt; the evidence, Jenner wrote, became "too manifest to admit of controversy."
I hope America is headed in a similarly pragmatic direction with regard to stem cell research.
For now, the breakthroughs may well occur outside the United States. To the dismay of the Vatican, the European Union recently agreed to expand investment in embryonic stem cell research. But in time, the promise of treatments made possible through embryonic stem cell research may prove impossible to resist in America, as well.
The fact is that stem cells have the potential to hold off our own ministers of death. And history suggests that's a proposition too powerful to remain shackled by the moral strictures of the moment.
Deborah Blum is the author of the forthcoming "Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death."
Deborah Blum
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: August 1, 2006
MADISON, Wisconsin In vetoing legislation that would have supported medical research using embryonic stem cells, President George W. Bush described his decision as moral rather than scientific, an act of conscience opposed to the taking of the "innocent human life" represented by embryonic stem cells.
The president's veto appears to create an intractable problem for stem cell researchers and their advocates. How is the research to advance when national policy inhibits the work from being done? Discouraged proponents have suggested that the president's decision has the potential to keep American science locked in the past.
The past, however, seems to encourage a more optimistic outlook. Medical progress has stirred religious and moral objections throughout history - objections that were overcome as the benefits of medical advances became overwhelmingly obvious. In the 11th century, European church leaders warned monks that treating illness with medicine showed such a lack of faith in God that it violated holy orders.
An illuminating case study is the late 18th-century controversy over inoculation against smallpox. Condemned by clerics as both immoral and blasphemous, smallpox inoculation offers some surprising parallels to America's current impasse over stem cells.
The word "smallpox" once implied all the horror of a murderous infection against which people had little remedy. A 19th-century historian called it "the most terrible of all the ministers of death."
Smallpox's legacy of misery obsessed the English doctor Edward Jenner. Born in 1749, Jenner spent years hunting for ways to conquer, or at least prevent, the dread disease. He gathered anecdotal evidence from patients and strangers, including milkmaids, who appeared protected from smallpox by their exposure to a related, but milder, infection called cowpox. He also studied the folk medicine practice of inoculation, in which pus from smallpox pustule was rubbed into an opening scratched in the skin of an uninfected person.
Other doctors were also exploring the idea of inoculation, but Jenner went further, conducting experiments. He designed a procedure using fluid from cowpox lesions to inoculate against smallpox. His approach was untested, but Jenner believed it offered the potential to become "essentially beneficial to mankind."
The religious authorities of Jenner's day viewed smallpox inoculation as an affront to God and man. A widely published British sermon was titled "The Dangerous and Sinful Practice of Inoculation." American clergy warned that inoculation usurped God's power to decide the beginning and end of life.
Jenner responded with a risky demonstration of his idea. In 1796, the doctor persuaded his own servant to allow the man's 8-year-old son to be inoculated with cowpox material; two months later, Jenner exposed the child to smallpox.
The experiment was a success. Moreover, the child remained immune to smallpox even after the doctor exposed him to it a second time. The doctor himself, however, was reviled. Clerics denounced him as a tool of the devil. Newspapers ridiculed him. Even some of his medical colleagues questioned whether he might have gone too far.
In retrospect, one can easily imagine Jenner's brilliant idea sinking under the combined weight of moral antipathy and scientific disdain.
Instead, the doctor persevered and triumphed by doggedly gathering more evidence based on more inoculations. Fueled by his success, the practice spread, and smallpox rates plummeted. In time, the life-saving merits of inoculation eventually overwhelmed all doubt; the evidence, Jenner wrote, became "too manifest to admit of controversy."
I hope America is headed in a similarly pragmatic direction with regard to stem cell research.
For now, the breakthroughs may well occur outside the United States. To the dismay of the Vatican, the European Union recently agreed to expand investment in embryonic stem cell research. But in time, the promise of treatments made possible through embryonic stem cell research may prove impossible to resist in America, as well.
The fact is that stem cells have the potential to hold off our own ministers of death. And history suggests that's a proposition too powerful to remain shackled by the moral strictures of the moment.
Deborah Blum is the author of the forthcoming "Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death."
posted by Carlos T Mock at 11:37 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home