Religious ignorance is trying to thwart science again.
--
Stem-Cell Research Is Liberation Biology - and The Religious Objectors
Are Costing Lives
The Religious Damned Organ Donation, Autopsies, IVF and Even Pasteurised
Milk
by Johann Hari
In the black gloop of down-beat news on global warming and Iraq, we
sometimes forget that, in at least one respect, we are living through a
shimmering moment of progress that should fill us with awe. The 21st
century is - as the science writer Ronald Bailey puts it - an era of
Liberation Biology. Every week now, scientists are steadily defusing the
diseases that have cut human life short for millennia, and stolen from
us the grandparents we never knew or the lovers who died too soon. They
are setting us free.
Only yesterday, it was revealed by Yale University scientists that they
have been able to make primates with severe Parkinsonıs disease walk and
eat unaided, by injecting them with human neural stem cells. The
implications for further research into humans are obvious - and dazzling.
Even those of us who are not privileged to be scientists can get the
gist of what is happening. In 1998, researchers were first able to
isolate embryonic stem cells - immature cells taken from human embyros.
These cells matter because they have the potential to develop into many
different types of tissue. Scientists are now slowly discovering which
molecular signals make them develop in different ways. If they can
unlock this code - if they can make the cells grow into whatever we need
- they will be able to transplant nerve cells into broken spines, making
the lame walk. They will be able to inject insulin-producing cells into
diabetics. They will be able to generate motor-neurone cells to treat
Parkinsonıs. And on the list goes, each one freeing millions of humans
from misery.
But - incredibly- there is a large slice of humanity that stubbornly
refuses to see any of this as progress. Instead, they see it as a
massacre.
The religious backlash against Liberation Biology has been viciously
successful, holding back scientific progress in almost every part of the
world. In Nigeria, mullahs have this year successfully prevented the
World Health Organisation from finally eradicating polio from the human
condition, by claiming the vaccine is part of an ³anti-Islamic plot² and
ordering their congregations to refuse it.
In the US, President Bush again pledged this week to veto legislation
sent to him by Congress that would permit federal funds to be used for
stem-cell research. And - lest we Europeans get smug - Britain is about
to introduce new laws restricting the development of ³hybrid embryos²
that will slowly strangle life-saving research.
This is all part of an old story: the conflict between science and
religion. For all the prattling by bishops that there is ³no
incompatibility here², in reality they are based on fundamentally
contrasting ways of understanding the world. Science is based on strict
empirical observation of the world, and deductions based on reason from
it. Faith is based on divine revelation (that is, hallucination), or
following the words of men who claim to have experienced it.
This battle has been playing out ever since modern science developed.
The religious damned autopsies, organ donation, IVF, and even pasturised
milk. Today, they are trying to halt the latest wave of Liberation
Biology because they claim that blastocysts - hollow spheres of cells
almost invisible to the naked eye - are ³human beings,² and therefore
cannot be harvested for life-saving stem cells.
What fact or reason can they point to, to make this point? There are
none. We can see through empirical observation that blastocysts have no
brains, no thoughts, no capacity to feel pain. So the religious ignore
empirical fact. Instead, they say that an invisible thing called ³the
soul² magically appears at the moment of conception. How do they know?
They just do. Okay?
These beliefs have animated the hardcore evangelical base in the US to
fight to retard and suppress research - and they have won. If they can
delay research in America - which is the worldıs laboratory, due to its
pro-science Enlightenment constitution - they can do it anywhere.
Scientists have been forced by this backlash into a massive diversion,
where they have had to try to use adult stem cells instead. Until
recently, it was thought that they are only capable of forming their
tissue of origin, making them far more limited. But it seems there has
been a breakthrough: researchers at UCLA claimed last month that they
have been able to take normal adult tissue cells and reprogramme them to
act as embryonic stem cells.
So is there, at last, a chance to dodge this debate with fanatics and
make progress? Sadly, itıs not that simple. Previous ³breakthroughs² in
this area have turned out to be dead-ends. And even if this isnıt
another one, adult stem cells are much harder to harvest at a reasonable
cost. It takes human embryonic stem cells 25 days to grow from 10
million cells to 10 trillion cells. It takes adult stem cells two weeks
longer, and it takes a hundred times more tissue culture surface to do
it. So research based on adult stem cells will be slower, burn up more
of the limited research funds - and therefore save fewer lives.
Here in Britain, we have a more subtle problem, with the debate focusing
on the plea by scientists to allow them to create ³hybrid embryos² -
taking an animal egg and injecting it with human DNA. They need to do
this because there are so few fully human stem cells to experiment with.
At the moment, they are dependent on the cast-offs from IVF. By
contrast, acquiring and adapting animal eggs offers an almost unlimited
supply.
But a string of tabloid headlines immediately conjured images of
³chimpmanzees² and ³pig-girls² being made by latter-day Dr Moreaus. One
headline shrieked: ³Can centaurs and talking pigs be far behind?² This
is a pig-ignorant question. At Newcastle University, for example, the
team led by Lyle Armstrong wants to use cow eggs to develop treatments
for diabetes and paralysis. These are not villains; they are heroes. We
should be cheering them on, not throwing obstacles into their paths.
But the Government is doing just that. In December, they announced an
outright ban on hybrid embryo research. Last month, they backed off -
but only a little. The 1990 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act -
which has covered these issues until now - outlined a few general
ethical rules of thumb, but left the science to an independent body of
experts to assess. The new legislation junks this approach, instead
offering mind-boggling detail outlining very narrow confines within
which scientists can operate.
There is none of the openness to new development of the old system; in
time, it will choke off innovations in the name of primitive, unfounded
fears.
Progress, it seems, never comes without a punch-up. Even the most
beautiful advances are fought against, by people speaking in the name of
³prophets² who thought demons and witches caused illnesses. Every day
they succeed in delaying this research is a day thousands of us die
unnecessarily.
---
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/14/1886/
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John #1782
"We should always be disposed to believe that which appears to us to be
white is really black, if the hierarchy of the church so decides."
- Saint Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556) Founder of the Jesuit Order.
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