Contacts & Publisher

Subscription Form

Home  / News & Publications /  Michigan Catholic News / 2008 /  The stem-cell scam

by Joe Kohn of The Michigan Catholic
Published October 10, 2008

Birmingham — She was told she was going to die.

That's how Pat McDonald knows how appealing medical risks can be when they might mean new hope.

She was all for it when her doctor at the Karmanos Cancer Institute asked whether she would be the first human being to try a new treatment for her deadly metastasized cancer.

"You're really the guinea pig," says McDonald. "You go from mice to people. It's a big risk.

"Life is worth it to me."

Taking risks to save her life is one matter — but destroying another's life for a chance to save her own is not something McDonald is willing to do. But that's exactly what some in the political and scientific communities are promoting when it comes to embryonic stem-cell research. On top of it, as McDonald will tell you, the hope that they're peddling is unfounded.

A parishioner at St. Anastasia Parish in Troy, McDonald spent years heading up the Michigan Chapter of the Multiple Sclerosis Society. In August of 2005, she developed a horrible cough. After a visit to her doctor, and a subsequent visit to the Karmanos Cancer Institute, she received a medical death sentence — stage four cancer which started in her lungs and spread throughout her body.

"Without any viable treatment, they figured I had three months to live," she said, sitting in the living room of her Birmingham home.

But both time-wise and in terms of having an impact on society, McDonald has had plenty more living to do than that. And some of it has had to do with educating others about embryonic stem-cell research — proponents of which offer false hope to people who suffer from serious diseases.

Throughout the country, the Catholic Church has been a booming voice in educating the public about embryo-destructive research, which first happened with human embryos in 1998. As the Church teaches from a moral standpoint, there's no difference between destroying an embryo in a mother's body through abortion, and destroying an embryo in a Petri dish for medical research.

An embryo is a living human being.

The research kills it.

McDonald, like Michigan's bishops and other Catholic leaders in the state, would rather see the deadly and unnecessary form of research put to rest. That's why they're urging voters on Nov. 4 to oppose Proposal 2, which would create a state constitutional amendment to supersede any law restricting embryo-destructive research. McDonald's role is as co-director of Michigan Citizens Against Unrestricted Science and Experimentation (MiCAUSE), an organization assembled to defeat the proposal.

The Church has spread the word about embryo-destructive research in many ways, even before the current ballot measure. Last year, the state's bishops, through the Church's public policy arm in the Michigan Catholic Conference, sent every registered Catholic in Michigan a DVD to explain the science behind embryonic stem-cell research. Parishes are spreading the word with literature and through homilies. And pro-life groups, such as Right to Life of Michigan and Right to Life—Lifespan — many of which are predominantly comprised of Catholics — have educated their membership and donors.

Last month, at a breakfast sponsored by Right to Life—Lifespan, renown Catholic bioethicist Fr. Tadeusz Pacholczyk of the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia, addressed a gathering of pro-life activists regarding what they can do to fight the notion that life can be destroyed for research.

"It's important to be able to articulate why the destruction of an embryo is indefensible, and to be able to articulate a wide array of alternatives" said Fr. Pacholczyk, who has a Ph.D. in neuroscience, as well as degrees in philosophy, biochemistry, molecular cell biology and chemistry. "It's important, too, that in a sense people talk about these issues among friends and acquaintances."

He also warned that this type of research — if too few people know enough to stop it — could become commonplace and unquestioned. It's already happened with in vitro fertilization, a practice in which multiple human egg cells are fertilized in a clinic to be implanted within a woman's uterus. The Church teaches against the practice because of its grave moral downside – the "extra" embryos created in the process are left to die.

"We will find ourselves in a similar situation, where young and vulnerable human beings are being manufactured and sacrificed on the altar of embryonic stem-cell research, if we don't get up to speed on the basics," Fr. Pacholczyk said.

Still, when it comes to reaching the average voter, simple messages appear to be effective. So when the group Cure Michigan — the main proponents of Proposal 2 — points to people with Parkinson's or Alzheimer's or cancer and promises them hope, it resonates.

But those who respect the dignity of life can look to the simple facts of the matter to make a moral decision about it. They can also see that, in a decade, embryonic stem-cell research has yielded no cures. And that even a majority of scientists admit that no treatments or cures are on the short-term horizon with the research. And if they can't get past the hype that there just might still be some value in killing embryos to give disease sufferers new hope — they can look to people such as McDonald.

She knows the torment of being told she's going to die.

She knows the agony of having a tumor lodged in her spine, shooting excruciating pain down the sciatic nerve that runs into her leg.

She knows, too, the despair of being confined to a bed for days at a time, by the very treatments meant to help her stay live.

She wants cures.

But what's more important, she says, is that more people know the very basics about embryonic stem-cell research:

It kills.

It doesn't offer cures.

It takes money away from more effective means of treating disease.

There are alternatives to it that don't require destroying life.

And, even if it could lead to cures?

"In truth," says McDonald, "if somebody came to my door today or one of my doctors said to me, 'We can cure your cancer,' I would have to turn it down — because it's embryonic stem-cell research. You don't take one life for another.

"There's a lot of good research out there. And science and faith are not separate. My goodness, God gave us science. So He'll help us find the answers, in some ways other than killing people."