A Man in Search of an Audience

Updated 12/5, 12/9 (We just can't slow this story down!): The Culture of Life people reported 12/1 on the news that the stem cell debate will soon be 'solved':

A member of the President's Council on Bioethics believes he may have found a way to obtain stem cells with the same potential as embryonic stem cells without creating or destroying a human embryo.

At last, a brilliant idea for getting around the big problem with embryonic stem cell research. It comes from President's Council on Bioethics member William Hurlbut, who constantly complains that those who favor embryonic stem cell research are - his term - "not morally serious" enough (take a listen). But he's had his idea vetted by "prominent Catholic clerics and other ethicists," to see if the technology he proposes is morally acceptable. The idea? Gushes the prolife newsletter:

in Hurlbut's method the gene responsible for creating the placenta is turned off. Hurlbut contends that this prevents an embryo from ever being created. But like traditional cloning, the egg still generates inner cell mass, or the "blank" cells, that some scientist believe have the greatest research potential. The [Boston] Globe reports that parts of the technique are currently being performed on mice.

Sounds great, right? It even sounds oddly familiar, probably. That is because it has been proposed in several forms by at least a dozen scientists who actually work in the area, and published in (among other places) Nature, although not by Hurlbut. Some of the papers are catching on to the idea that maybe the suggestion isn't so novel. But Hurlbut thinks his solution is important and scientifically significant, and conservatives are everywhere trumpeting the significant scientific breakthrough.

There's just one problem with taking him at face value: He has no publications in stem cell biology, ethics, theology or any part of clinical IVF. Nor is he, an MD, in clinical practice in that or any other area. Stanford faculty who have asked the president of that institution to release him point out that he has allowed and personally encouraged the description of him as a "Stanford scientist."

Hurlbut bases the moral utility of his claim on the fact that he vetted it with priests

The Boston Globe covered his theory, and right to lifers are beside themselves with joy at the morally serious solution. (UPDATE: Actually, some of the pro-life leaders are beginning to see the fix Hurlbut's idea puts them in) But there are many, many problems with Hurlbut's claims that even a visit to the Pope won't fix: 1) he makes assumptions about what counts as an embryo, a matter on which no ten embryo researchers agree, 2) he thus makes assumptions about when the destruction of embryonic material would count as destruction of an embryo, a person, or a human life for either scientists or clerics, 3) he makes no effort whatever to describe why his proposal is somehow less objectionable than other nuclear transfer technologies that he has campaigned against so vigerously.

UPDATE: Washington Post reports that Hurlbut's idea was mocked by a visiting scientist at the council, but that nonetheless the council is trading on the prominence afforded to it by Hurlbut's "big ticket idea," and as a direct result Leon Kass did in fact hold hearings on "solutions" to the stem cell problem, which (surprisingly to me, anyway) were hailed by Kass himself (chair) as important stuff. One might have guessed that Professor Kass would be a bit embarrassed that his handpicked council would advance ideas as potentially repugnant (following his analysis in his own writing) as Hurlbut's, designed to sidestep rather than engage a debate. And Kass does try his best to make the ideas sound thoughtful:

Kass said the ideas raise the possibility that "the partisans of scientific progress and the defenders of the dignity of nascent human life can go forward in partnership without anyone having to violate things they hold dear."

But the idea is neither an artful dodge nor a successful one. - GM