Stem cell research: confusion about adult stem cells and embryo stem cells

BBC Today programme 12 november – and many newspapers on 11 November
Surgeons hail stunning breakthrought for “stem cell research” [link] in Bristol. Now there are medical uses for stem cells. A key question, given the recent embryology bill, is whether it is adult stem cells or embryonic stem cells. Why do they omit to say?

We know that so far all of the successful applications of stem cells have come from adult stem cells and that embryo cell applications have not gone beyond their “tremendous promise”. The embryo research issue revealed little understanding of the detail by its supporters; when the fact was noted that embryonic cell research had not as yet brought any medical advances, they told us of the potential for embryonic cell research. This apparently is not seen by private investors, who are putting their money into adult stem cell research; hence the need for scientists working in the field to lobby for state funding.

Supporters of stem cell research tend to be on the liberal side of politics (including supposed “conservatives”). Their take on personal identity which informs the politics is shared by behaviourists of the 20th century and communists in Russia and Eastern Europe. It eschews talk of the soul and fails to find any unifying property that defines an individual. Identity is contingent, incremental, determined by the material. It follows that an embryo is a lot less than human. The opposing view that the embryo is human is associated very much with the catholic church, who have led the struggle against abortion; but their views seem to be held by many non-catholic and non-Christian conservatives, whose political views arise from the fact that they are not believers in the rationalist, materialist paradigm subscribed to by the left.

The embryo research debate has always been a totemic issue. It has been characterised as religion vs science, but the battle is really about a positivist conception of science, which takes the view that science is outside the realm of “morality” as they conceive it; its supporters tend to accept the Voltaire's wrong-headed critique of Christianity and the Catholic church as the enemy of progress and scientific endeavour. This is spite of the fact that the church sponsored research in the medieval and early modern period, that monasteries were hotbeds of technological innovation, that Copernicus was a catholic priest, that Galileo was initially supported by the Pope. Mud sticks, and accumulates if thrown often enough. On the BBC and virtually all mainstream media outlets in Britain, this view is repeated ad nauseam, so the supporters of this world view can take its acceptance for granted.

The supporters of embryo research say that they are supporting science. Well, they should do more to instill discipline into the school system; they should do more to promote manufacturing which needs science to innovate; then scientists would be paid more; while not discouraging girls to do science, maybe they should accept that there is likely to be more men than women in mathemtics and physics and that this is not a bad thing – and is in fact unimportant compared to whether we have qualified people. Embyro research is insignificant in relation to the above issues; yet it gains so much overt support. the conclusion I have reached is that their motivation is ideological, that this is another form of gesture politics. They are not supporting science so much as a liberal view of the world which sees objective science in opposition to conventional morality, as represented especially “religion”, the archetype of which is the liberal bete noire, the catholic church; they are fighting the battle of Galileo against the church all over again. They are not responding to the issue, but have instead laid aside any empirically based decision in favour of ideologically motivated gesture politics.