Editorials
COMMONWEAL Saving lives? bortions may save lives. That paradoxical claim lies behind congressional support for lifting a ban on medical research using fetal tissue derived from abortions. Although...
...And it is here that the argument becomes very difficult, as illustrated by the testimony of Guy Walden...
...For dramatic appeal before Congress, consider the example of the man suffering from kidney failure who, in the 1970s, was dialyzed before a congressional committee in a compelling plea for federal funds to make the treatment more widely available...
...Yet we find it improbable that these strictures would stand if researchers did devise treatments or find cures...
...In the debate over use of fetal tissue, men and women with Parkinson's testified to the remission of their symptoms after being given fetal-cell implants...
...So dialysis has become a necessary, and costly, treatment for kidney failure, and, of course, its use has been extended far beyond the otherwise relatively healthy people for whom it was first devised as a bridge between kidney failure and a kidney transplant...
...Yet in testimony before Congress, Walden argued, "Right now this tissue [from aborted fetuses] is being thrown in the trash cans...
...Once again, Congress would find itself listening to stories of human suffering that they do not have the heart—or the moral resources—to resist...
...They should be made available to researchers along with federal money to test the potential for alleviating symptoms of crippling disease or curing fatal ones...
...If the ban is ultimately lifted, cures are predicted for Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's, diabetes, genetic disorders, and radiation injuries...
...said he found the use of fetal tissue to save lives "prolife...
...Unfortunately, for large numbers of patients, no compatible transplants are available...
...If prolifers like Walden can make the moral jump that separates the use of fetal tissues from the means by which they are made available, then the argument against approval is very tough indeed...
...Among the supporters there are those who, though opposed to abortion, would further argue that this research is one way to see good come from the deaths caused by abortion...
...Currently, research with fetal tissues is being conducted on a very small scale with private funds and, at least in this country, only with tissues from ectopic pregnancies, miscarriages, and stillbirths (in fact, federal funding is available for this form of fetal tissue research...
...Congress seems to have little resistance to the pleas of the sick and their advocates, especially when they are dramatic and especially when they show up on the congressional doorstep or are related to a member of congress (Senator Strom Thurmond [R-S.C.] sees a potential cure for his diabetic daughter...
...Of course, fetal tissue is human tissue—not even Roe v. Wade denies A: 19 June 1992 that...
...In fact, anti-abortion Senator Mark Hatfield (R-Oreg...
...that by encouraging, rewarding, or pressuring women to serve as reproducers of surplus parts and tissues, it would demean them as persons, as women, and as mothers (an argument some feminists have raised against surrogate motherhood...
...But lifting the ban would allow an indirect link to be forged, and not simply for this or that exceptional case...
...that it might lead to the selling and buying of fetal body parts...
...It is tough to argue in favor of maintaining the ban, as the votes of normally prolife advocates in Congress show...
...For others who support abortion and have no problem using the tissue, more pragmatic arguments have been mounted against using aborted fetal tissue: that it might encourage women to have abortions, even late abortions, especially if a fetal organ might be transplanted into a relative, for example, another child...
...Of course, one assumes that in most cases there would be no direct relationship between the abortion decision—it was not made "in order to" save a life—and the use of the fetal remains for medical lifesaving...
...And it is clear enough: the ends are contradicted by the means...
...Legislative efforts, embodied in the NIH bill, to create a wall between abortion and the subsequent use of fetal tissue suggest one way to meet some of these objections...
...The ban has been in place since 1988...
...If we can save a life [by using it], shouldn't we...
...To refer to fetal tissue as if it were mere tissue disembedded from its human provenance, or to speak of finding it in a trash can as if magically transported from we-know-not-where, evades the morally obvious...
...Abortion would become that much more an institutionalized part of the health-care system, factored into research plans, providing returns to the pharmaceutical industry, and sharing in the moral legitimacy of the lifesaving enterprise...
...Congress obliged...
...For that reason after World War II the scientific community chose to forego whatever knowledge might derive from Nazi medical experiments...
...The case is relevant to the current debate over fetal tissue research...
...Although the vote on a National Institutes of Health reappropriation bill, which , includes funding for such research, was not sufficient to override a presidential veto, the measure is likely to come up again...
...The Reverend Guy Walden, a Southern Baptist minister, told a congressional hearing of the implant's potential in extending the life of his son who has Hurler's syndrome, a fatal genet19 June 1992:3 ic condition that killed two other sons...
...Harvesting that tissue in order to save or sustain another, wanted human life cannot redeem the taking of life in the first place (drawing good out of evil...
...But because these kinds of tissue may have become infected or may be genetically defective, researchers say they would prefer tissues and organs from "healthy" fetuses, ones that have been aborted...
...Taking innocent human lives in order to save other human lives undermines a basic principle of the moral code that sustains our society and the legal code that regulates our common life...
...And then, there are the unforeseen consequences of beginning and funding research and treatment programs that it will be impossible to end, indeed even to control, after thousands or hundreds of thousands become dependent on their availability—in this case, dependent as well on the availability of abortion...
...But dramatic appeals and promises of medical breakthroughs always need to be scrutinized with a skeptical eye, especially in circumstances where the claims for cure far exceed the data, and even more so when the promise of a cure rests upon the availability of aborted fetal tissue...
...Walden's very language shows how easy it is to become insensitive to the morally problematic character of this enterprise...
...Yet the argument must be made...
...This tissue was once part of a developing life that has been destroyed and dispatched...
...To begin with, the promise of a dramatic cure or a treatment that will save lives is an effective tool in prising federal support and funds for research...
...For Walden is opposed to abortion, and according to news reports, his son was treated with fetal cells that came not from an abortion but from an ectopic pregnancy...
...Many people now survive because of the federal program that pays the cost of dialysis...
...Who could object...
...Proponents argue that the fetal tissues, organs, and cells now abundantly available are simply being wasted...
...Among those who do not see abortion as the taking of a human life, there are certainly some who, nonetheless, might agree that there is no reason to capitalize on what may be a tragic necessity for some women...
...As a result, the prior system of rationing dialysis, especially for those who might eventually find a compatible kidney for transplant, has disappeared...
Vol. 119 • June 1992 • No. 12
