Required Reading: Rethink Stem Cell Research and Cloning

March 20, 2006

(via National Review Online)
Today’s National Review Online carries an opinion piece by Robert George and Eric Cohen encouraging us to view the Korean cloning scandal as an opportunity to rethink stem cell research and cloning. George and Cohen make a number of good points, but one that really stands out to me is their take on the political agenda of the scientific community.

The future of stem-cell research is rightly a political issue — an issue for deliberation and resolution in the forums of democracy — involving a debate about the ethics of embryo-destructive research, the values of society, and the priorities of the nation. But some scientists, pretending that they are free of political conviction, purport to speak only in the name of science when they demand the public right to use of human embryos as raw materials for research and public funding to pay for their experiments. Embryo research may prove to be scientifically useful, but science alone cannot tell us whether such research is morally good. To promote the embryo research agenda, elite journals such as The New England Journal of Medicine have stated publicly that they will give special attention to research involving embryonic stem cells, not simply because of its scientific merit but because of its political value. To these scientists, embryo research has become a litmus test for being “pro-science,” and the central front in the alleged war of scientific reason against religious barbarians. (Italics in the original.)

Read the whole thing.