Forum: Stem-cell parables
Management expert MICHAEL D. KERLIN thinks both Christianity and practicality argue for supporting embryonic stem-cell research
Sunday, February 04, 2007

This is a personal appeal from one Christian graduate of Harvard Business School to another.



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Michael D. Kerlin, a management consultant based in Washington, D.C., and a native of Lafayette Hill, Pa., was vice president of the Harvard Business School Catholic Students Association (mike_kerlin@yahoo.com).



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Mr. President, the discussion about stem-cell research in our country has pitted pragmatism against religion. These two ways of thinking need not conflict, however, when the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act, already approved by the House and soon to pass the Senate, crosses your desk. You vetoed the legislation last year, but I hope that pragmatism and religion will inspire your approval this year.

The pure pragmatism you and I learned at Harvard Business School might suggest a simple cost-benefit analysis: By adopting the legislation to fund tests on several hundred embryos that would have been discarded anyway by in vitro fertilization clinics, we stand the chance to save several million lives. But religion matters, too, since human lives are at stake -- sick and dying Americans as well as the embryos destroyed during the research.

In pluralistic America, we should seek input from all religions. As fellow Christians, you and I can turn to the life of Jesus.

Jesus never weighed in on stem-cell research, but we do know how He felt about the sick. In Matthew, Chapter 20 of the New American Bible, two blind men sat on the side of the road. "Lord, Jesus, have pity on us," they said. Then, says the Bible, "Moved by compassion, Jesus touched their eyes, and immediately they could see." In yet another act of compassion, the Bible tells us Jesus raised an ordinary man named Lazarus from the dead.

America today is full of blind men and Lazaruses, millions of whom stand to benefit from stem-cell research. Let me paint these people as characters in modern-day parables.

After a tragic car accident, Stephen is paralyzed from the neck down, unable to move any muscle in his body except for his face, eyes and mouth. He gasps out his words, since the ventilator on which he depends only gives him 14 breaths per minute.

Debbie has just been diagnosed with adult diabetes. During college, Debbie struggled through the untimely death of her father, who also had diabetes. Now she wonders if she, too, will die at the age of 50, never able to know her grandchildren.

Susan is in her final months of a five-year battle with Lou Gehrig's disease. Except it hasn't been a battle. Facing a degenerative disease with no cure, Susan knew from the minute she received her diagnosis that she had no hope. She lost movement first in her legs, then in her arms. Now, Susan cannot speak. She will die soon.

Each new day with Parkinson's disease stiffens Peter's body. His hands tremble, his muscles twitch and his legs lock, so he can no longer toss a football with his grandson. He can barely claw his way out of bed in the morning.

Stephen, Debbie, Susan and Peter, along with cancer patients, multiple sclerosis patients and others, are the blind men and women and the Lazaruses of today. In stem-cell research, we have a tool to heal these people. And yet we risk turning our backs on them.

I think that all of us -- ordinary Americans, legislators and you, Mr. President -- might learn from a simple exercise: Read the stories above but replace Stephen, Debbie, Susan and Peter with the names of the four people in your life that you most love. And then imagine telling those people that you wouldn't do everything in your power to save them.

To be sure, the stem-cell research debate has shades of gray. Adult stem cells show promise as do new discoveries of stem cells in amniotic fluid. But, now, we must turn again to pragmatism. Because of current limitations on federal stem-cell research funding, the country's best scientists are forced to invest not in progress but in workarounds that all but nullify much of their prior progress on embryonic stem-cell research. With every year invested in suboptimal workarounds, thousands of Americans die and millions lose hope.

As a fellow Christian, Mr. President, I also believe in the sanctity of human life. It saddens me deeply to see embryos destroyed during stem-cell research, but it saddens me more to think that hundreds of embryos are being discarded when they could be used to save millions of lives.

I pray that when the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act arrives for your signature, Mr. President, you will remember the blind men and the Lazaruses of today. They are calling out to you to have pity on them.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07035/759002-109.stm