blog.bioethics.net

Mitt's moment on stem cells

The 2008 US presidential election is still more than a year away and it's still way, way too early to predict what's going to happen (ask Howard Dean), but the general outlines of the situation are starting to come together. Mitt Romney won the Iowa Republican straw poll this past weekend. He's leading the polls in New Hampshire. And nationally, he's slowly moving up (though Giuliani is leading the pack).

So, there's a little bit of a Mitt moment going on. Let's take a look at where Romney stands on stem cell research and, by extension, abortion. Much has been made of Romney's "conversion" already, but there's an interesting story that goes along with his positions. And it's worth the attention if he ends up as one of the main players on the Republican side.

Romney has very publicly changed his position on abortion. In his successful run for the governorship of Massachusetts in 2002, Romney pledged that he was a supporter of abortion rights. But Romney says he changed his mind during the last few years -- and it was a visit with Harvard stem cell researcher Douglas Melton that pushed him in the opposite direction. Romney talked about the meeting last year on Charlie Rose (quote starts at 14:00):

I sat down with a researcher. And he said, "Look, you don't have to think about stem cell research as a moral issue because we kill the embryos after 14 days."

And I, that struck me, as he said that. And I thought, "Is that the extent to which we've cheapened life? Has the Roe v. Wade process and approach so cheapened life that we think about killing embryos without batting an eye?"

And I recognized that I could no longer stand in the posture of saying, look, I personally oppose, but but I'm not going to change the law.

The Boston Globe followed up with Melton about this meeting, and here's what Melton told the Globe in a statement:

Governor Romney has mischaracterized my position; we didn't discuss killing or anything related to it. I explained my work to him, told him about my deeply held respect for life, and explained that my work focuses on improving the lives of those suffering from debilitating diseases.

As it happens, Romney cited another personal encounter as a main factor in his original stance on abortion. While running for the Senate in 1994, Romney recounted how a close family friend had died from complications during an illegal abortion in the 1960s. And it was that event which persuaded him to support safe and legal abortion.

Romney's shift on abortion during the last few years seems to have paralleled similar movement on stem cell research. The Globe reported that in 2002 during an event at Brandeis, Romney issued broad support of stem cell research and declined to offer an opinion on cloning embryos. But after that meeting with Melton, and another with William Hurlbut and the National Catholic Bioethics Center's Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczuk, Romney declared he would work to criminalize research involving cloning. Here's what he wrote in 2005 Boston Globe op/ed after vetoing state legislation aimed at shaping the rules for cloning research:

The bill's sponsors promise us they have ''crafted strong ethical safeguards," resting their case on the distinction between cloning for human reproduction and cloning for research. Research cloning involves the creation of a human embryo for purposes of experimentation, with the intent to destroy it. Reproductive cloning would continue the process by implanting this embryo into a uterus.

However, the process of cloning only occurs once, with the creation of the embryo -- a unique genetic entity with the full complement of chromosomes. Once cloning occurs, a human life is set in motion.

Calling this process ''somatic cell nuclear transfer," or conveniently dismissing the embryo as a mere ''clump of cells," cannot disguise the reality of what occurs: A genetically complete human embryo is brought into being. It is manipulated and experimented upon like so much research material. And then that emerging life is destroyed and discarded. Imagine row after row of laboratory racks, filled with growing human embryos: a ''Brave New World."

Most recently, Romney has been advocating that stem cell research should focus on deriving pluripotent stem cells in ways that don't "create, harm, or destroy human embryos." And at a Republican debate this past June, Romney seemed to indicate that while he thinks it should be legal for researchers to work with left-over embryos from fertility clinics, such research should not have the backing of federal funding.

(The best single article we found on all this is the Boston Globe's take from last December)

-Greg Dahlmann