March 4, 2004

Newsfeed: Laurie Zoloth

Laurie Zoloth discusses the ethics of stem cell research

The recent announcement that South Korean scientists created human embryos from stem cells has revived debates over the practice of human cloning. Laurie Zoloth, professor of medical ethics and humanities and professor of religion, says because the development was made outside this country, it does not violate the U.S. law banning the creation of new stem cell lines.

It affirmed the idea that this research is not the province of any one religion or state. It’s international research and many people with a lot of different ideas about moral status, personhood, religion and faith will be involved. The fact that research happened outside the country means the U.S. might not necessarily have the ascendancy in scientific research if it’s constrained by religious strictures.

Zoloth believes distinct lines can be made between human cloning and cloning for research.

I think there’s a near universal agreement that human reproductive cloning is so problematic as to be impermissible. It seems dramatically unsafe; it steers us towards a very troubling path about the meaning of death and the meaning of children in general. It’s very different from cloning for regeneration or cloning for basic research. I think we’re prudent enough in this society to actually carve out a niche on this slippery slope and say “this far and no further.”

Zoloth thinks a different perspective on stem cell research may explain the importance of the findings.

The stem cell research issue has become a situation in which one perspective on the use of human embryos has really been able to dominate the debate about what our policy should be. So the fact that it was done outside of that debate really allows us a chance to rethink the power of the initial arguments.

Zoloth believes it is important to support the type of research done in South Korea.

I just want to appreciate the gesture toward basic research and the need to support basic research science as a kind of free speech. It should be protected by people that like to see these kinds of ideas freely expressed even if they never have any clinical application. Of course those of us who watch sincerely hope there is clinical application. But even if there isn’t, the idea that researchers can follow any guess is part of what it means to do free and good democratic science.

— Samira Puskar