An Acceptable Compromise? President Bush's Stem Cell Research Policy

"My administration must decide whether to allow federal funds, your tax dollars, to be used for scientific research on stem cells derived from human embryos."

With these words to the American people on August 9, 2001, President George W. Bush introduced his policy statement in a presidential address some have described as unusually profound and more philosophical than we have come to expect from a modern political leader.

In this article I shall use the stem cell policy formulated by President Bush to help us analyze an important issue within Christian ethics known as compromise.

Facts, opinions, and questions

The articulateness of President Bush's address involved, among other things, his careful identification of several important facts, opinions, and questions that are relevant to a moral policy regarding federal funding of stem cell research.

FACT: a large number of "excess" embryos exist as the result (Mr. Bush said "product") of in vitro fertilization.

FACT: some of these embryos have been donated to science and have been used to produce privately funded stem cell lines.

FACT: stem cells can be obtained from adult cells, from umbilical cords, and from human placentas, as well as from embryos.

FACT: in carefully chosen words, the president explained that ". . . extracting the stem cell destroys the embryo and thus destroys its potential for life"; moreover, each embryo contains "the unique genetic potential of an individual human being."

FACT: scientists have produced ("created" was the president's term) human embryos in test tubes solely to experiment on them; as a result of private research, more than sixty stem cell lines already exist; these lines were produced (again, "created" was the original term) from embryos that have already been destroyed, and they have the ability to regenerate themselves indefinitely, providing ongoing opportunities for research.

Not only are facts important for reaching a moral decision, but opinions and questions can be formulated in a way that helps us as well. Here are a number that the president provided.

OPINION: many scientists believe that the research on embryonic stem cells offers the most promise, since these cells have the potential to develop in all the tissues of the body.

OPINION: federal funds will help to attract the best and the brightest scientists to this research, and will help to ensure the widest distribution of research results that will serve the greatest public good.

QUESTION: Are these frozen embryos human life and therefore to be protected?

QUESTION: If these embryos will be destroyed, should they not be used for a greater good, for research that has the potential to save and improve other lives?

Summary of the policy

The policy response of President Bush contains three distinct actions, which we might list in reverse order of their presentation. (1) He appointed a council to monitor stem cell research, to recommend appropriate guidelines and regulations, and to consider the medical and ethical ramifications of biomedical innovation. (2) He disallowed federal funding in support of developing any new stem cell lines, or in destroying any more embryos for the purpose of stem cell research. (3) He allowed federal funding in support of research on existing stem cell lines that had been developed by a process resulting in the death of embryos.

The second component of the president's policy is somewhat gratifying to us who believe the Bible teaches that human life begins at conception. But the president's retraction of federal funding for developing new stem cell lines raises other serious and irrepressible questions. In connection with the process of in vitro fertilization, why are we allowing the production of "excess" embryos? Why are we not requiring that every embryo produced be implanted? Did not the possibility of experimenting with embryonic stem cells arise directly from the permissibility of producing "excess" embryos? This line of questioning identifies an important factor affecting the policy on embryonic stem cell research, namely: the current debate about stopping the funding for embryonic stem cell research has arisen in the context of apparently lenient regulations governing in vitro fertilization. Upon entering office, President Bush inherited a set of circumstances for which his administration was not responsible. (See "The Camel's Nose: Today's Stem-Cell Problem Originated Years Ago," by Andree Seu, World, Sept. 1, 2001.)

Clearly the most troublesome component of the president's stem cell research policy is his permission of federal funding of research on existing stem cell lines that had already been developed by destroying embryos. In the president's own words, "I have concluded that we should allow federal funds to be used for research of these existing stem cell lines, where the life-and-death decision has already been made. Leading scientists tell me research on these sixty lines has great promise that could lead to breakthrough therapies and cures. This allows us to explore the promise and potential of stem cell research without crossing a fundamental moral line by providing taxpayer funding that would sanction or encourage further destruction of human embryos that have at least the potential for life."

Nobody wins

The president's obvious compromise has been criticized by pundits on both ends of the political spectrum.

Although he acknowledged that Mr. Bush's policy speech was a balanced, fair, and compassionate presentation of moral argument and political reasoning, conservative Michael Novak objected to its fundamental principle of seeking to bring good out of evil. When this source of stem cells runs out, Novak observed, people will demand more stem cells from other embryos. More problematic, however, is that the president has surrendered the strongest ground, which is philosophical, not theological, a ground "born of reason rather than of faith." It was Immanuel Kant who taught us that we must never use a human being as a means. "Using stem cells obtained by killing living human beings in their embryonic stage is still using them as means," argues Novak. The purpose of destroying these embryos was to obtain stem cells, a purpose that we as a nation must reject.

Within weeks of the president's decision, liberal congressional critics of the Bush administration were insisting that the compromise is too limited to be useful, since only twenty-four or twenty-five of the stem cell lines identified by the National Institutes of Health were fully developed, with no guarantee that the other lines would become fully useful to researchers.

What is acceptable compromise?

Now that we have presented the relevant facts and opinions, we need to clarify how the issue of moral compromise comes into play.

First, we need to define moral compromise. The word "compromise" comes from the Latin word compromittere, which means "to reach a settlement, to reach an agreement." One usage provided by the Oxford English Dictionary is: "Adjustment for practical purposes of rival courses of action, systems, or theories, conflicting opinions or principles, by the sacrifice or surrender of a part of each." Compromise may be defined as the necessary acceptance of less than what God requires. Compromise, then, is moral concession.

We must acknowledge, along with virtually every Christian ethicist, that moral compromise is an inescapable reality of living in a sinful world. The real question is not whether moral compromise will occur in Christian living, but whether the moral compromise that inevitably occurs is necessary.

An essential characteristic of moral compromise is that a person cannot do what he is obligated to do. In such a situation, should a person do nothing, or should he wait for further developments, or should he be satisfied with reaching a lesser objective than he knows is right? To put the issue sharply: given a situation where abortion is legal and where only two choices are available, which is better--to support an abortion law whose known result will be the loss of 100,000 human lives or to refuse to support such a law, which then will result in the loss of 200,000 human lives?

If a third option exists which is both better and attainable, then clearly a moral compromise between these two would not be necessary and would therefore be unacceptable. To be a necessary compromise, the injury suffered by rejecting the compromise must be greater than the injury occasioned by accepting the compromise. In such a case, achieving some good is better than achieving no good at all. An illustration of this principle, commonly appealed to by Christian moralists, is God's permission of divorce among Israel, whereby He restrained evil arising from hardness of heart. Such a compromise is designed to regulate and to moderate evil rather than to remove it. Arguing on the basis of this biblical example, William Perkins warned against settling only for the best if in the process we would lose the next best. Fully in line with this principle, Joel Belz, editor of World, has put it this way: "In the debate over embryonic stem-cell research, some well-meaning folks argue strenuously that because such efforts necessarily involve the wanton destruction of existing human beings, the national policy should preclude such research. That, however, is to structure a laudable conclusion on an unprovable premise--and whenever you do that in a public policy debate, you run the risk of losing both ends of the argument" ("If there is a mystery," World, August 18, 2001).

There are other conditions for acceptable compromise. To be acceptable, moral compromise must serve love (toward God and neighbor) and life. Further, the suffering occasioned by compromise can be accepted only with reluctance, and must be intended as a temporary consequence.

But there are limits to compromise. We may not deny our faith in God or loyalty to His service. We may not settle for any compromise that allows the destruction of human life. But cooperating with efforts to adjust existing abortion policies is an altogether different matter. In a situation where reversing pro-abortion legislation will not succeed, we should support every improvement that can lead to fewer victims.

What, then, of already existing stem cell lines?

In terms of the observations I have presented, I believe President Bush's policy compromise is morally unacceptable.

I write this out of deep respect and affection for Mr. Bush as a leader whose general moral sensitivity is praiseworthy and heartening.

Nevertheless, permitting the use of tax dollars for funding research on already existing stem cell lines produced from embryos already destroyed is an unnecessary moral concession whose weakness will be exploited.

We can all agree that Mr. Bush inherited a moral mess--a biotechnology industry already harvesting embryos expressly for research and experimentation, an industry where moral questions surrounding in vitro fertilization have been largely ignored in terms of public policy and legal consequences. But the president had a third option. Rather than permit or deny funding for this particular form of research, he had an opportunity to call for a moratorium on this research, research whose defenders can speak only in terms of promise and potential, not reality and achievement. This moratorium would have provided opportunity for a national discussion that could have uncovered inadequacies in existing regulations of in vitro fertilization and forged a moral consensus before moving forward. His denial of funding for developing new stem cell lines certainly will not be secure for very long if his justification for permitting funding for developing existing stem cell lines is simply that they already exist. The quiet suggestion that perhaps by means of this compromise good may ultimately come from evil, is profoundly disturbing for us who agree with the apostle Paul that the calling of government is to punish evil, not to transform it.

Is a third option attainable? Such a question is legitimate, I think. If politics may be described as the art of the possible, considerations of success and failure in achieving goals are essential to effective governing.

But the real issue underlying Mr. Bush's compromise may well be the (in)capacity of the American people for any type of national public discourse, whether moral, intellectual, cultural, or political. Indeed, if the nation lacks the capacity for moral conversation, then the president's compromise may be nothing more than a sad and desperate reflection, for which we all share the blame.