Differing views of stem-cell research
CSI panelists take
Jewish, Catholic, Muslim and scientific approaches to contentious
subject
Staten Island Advance - April 8, 2005
With the winds of change blowing, a panel of doctors
offered College of Staten Island students differing perspectives on
the controversial topic of stem-cell research yesterday.
The discussion came one day after Dr. Elias Zerhouni, director of
the National Institutes of Health, testified before a panel of
United States senators, telling them that “mounting evidence” exists
in support of loosening restrictions on federal financing of
embryonic stem-cell research.
The roundtable was cosponsored by the Office of the Deans of
Sciences and Humanities, the Pre-Medical Society, the Muslim Student
Association, Hillel and the Catholic Campus Ministry, and the
panelists came at the subject through Jewish, Catholic and Muslim
lenses, as well as from a purely scientific viewpoint.
In 2001, President George Bush limited government researchers to
pre-existing embryonic stem-cell lines, many of which have become
useless over time. The potential to save human lives, which some
argue comes at the cost of potential lives, made embryonic stem-cell
research a contentious issue in last year’s presidential election.
Dr. Faiz Khan, an emergency and internal medicine specialist at Long
Island Jewish Medical Center who is also an assistant imam, asserted
that the political debate over embryonic stem-cell research is
unscientific and ‘ideologically tainted. Dr. Khan argued that more
funding should go to research on stem cells harvested from adult
tissue, which have shown much better results.
“Of the 56 diseases worked on, zero cures have come from embryonic
stem cells,” he said. “They are unstable, and have no known
benefits.”
Nevertheless, he said further research is justified by embryonic
stem cells’ vast adaptive qualities.
Dr. Allen Bennett, president of the Association of Orthodox Jewish
Scientists, agreed.
The panelists noted that, while both Jewish and Muslim law forbids
conceiving embryos for the sake of research, that research should be
done on the hundreds of thousands of embryos created with eggs
unavoidably harvested for in-vitro fertilization (IVF), most of
which end up being destroyed.
Marilyn Martone, a doctor of theology at St. John’s University, said
the Catholic Church is in favor of stem-cell research, but not any
using embryos from IVF. Because the church sees destruction of
embryos as tantamount to abortion, there is no chance of a change in
policy under a new pope, she said.
By
Ben Eben Newhouse
Reprinted here with permission from the
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