sermon

INTRODUCTION: In the early 1990s, at the Unitarian Universalist church at which I ministered in Edmond, Oklahoma, one of the members was a research scientist at the University of Oklahoma’s School of Medicine. She worked with in vitro fertilization. As you may know that is a process of insemination outside the body, which manually combines the egg of a woman with the sperm of a man and places it in a laboratory incubator. If in two or three days, the conjoining is successful, it is labeled an “embryo” and is joined with another procedure known as “embryo transfer,” in which the embryo is physically placed in a woman’s uterus.

One time at Christmas, we had this scientist make a presentation on the process of bringing life to fruition. It was very evident in her presentation that she was not only professionally committed to what she did, but also emotionally involved as well. She knew she was involved in creating new life, and fully appreciated how special that task was.

But one of the things reinforced since then is that embryonic stem cells, whether taken from aborted fetuses or from those produced in a laboratory, have within them the capacity to produce every single kind of cell in the human body. They are, in fact, master cells.

Especially significant, in numerous animal experiments, there have been instances when these master cells have been able to repair diseased cells. The clear implication’s being that they may in fact hold the key to the possibility of a cure for some of humankind’s most implacable illnesses.

So why are we not aggressively pursuing research in this field, and devoting billions upon billions of dollars to the task? Why would we pursue death and destruction in Iraq instead of life and hope in America?

The answer of course is that in 2001, one of the first acts of the then, new president, George W. Bush, was to place limitations on funding and on what kind of stem cell research could be done. The reason? There were those who felt that embryos, whether from aborted fetuses or from embryos created in the laboratory, were human life, and should not be used in research, even if the purpose was to save human lives. When it was pointed out that the couples donating the embryos, or the person having had the abortion, had given their consent for such use, that was discounted. When it was further shown that the embryos were otherwise destined for destruction, that too was dismissed.

The point is that our science is posing issues far beyond the constraints of good and bad, life and death, black and white. How do we reconcile its complexity, in such things as stem cell research?

I would suggest there are two simple guidelines, that turn out not to be so simple at all.

Now I put the qualifier – “if possible” – for the simple reason that we live with the awareness that we are constantly doing harm in one way or another. For example, no matter how good of gasoline mileage our vehicle gets, driving to All Faiths this morning released carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, further adding to the global warming going on in the world. As we know, America is the major contributor to global warming due to our obsession with automobiles as our primary mode of transportation. One of the upsides of the downside of fuel prices is that we may now limit our driving, or at least seek more fuel efficient vehicles, and thereby release fewer pollutants into the atmosphere.

Another example is the eating of beef. It is one of the most costly forms of food supply in the food chain. The energy and grains necessary to mass produce beef are enormous. Plus, the fecal wastes of cattle contribute a significant amount of methane gases to atmospheric pollution. Shouldn’t we all be vegetarians?

When we study some of the issues involved in agricultural production, there was a time when more than 22% of the U.S. lived on farms and more than 20% made their living from farming. But in the 1950s, President Dwight Eisenhower had a Secretary of Agriculture, Ezra Taft Benson, who made a pivotal shift in the portrait of the family farm. He had a plan by which America could become the food basket of the world, and that we need never again have a depression where people did not have enough to eat. He created a farm program that rewarded farmers for producing five grains: wheat, corn, soybeans, rice and oats. Farmers who produced those crops were guaranteed a set price – a subsidy – regardless of whether the market was above or below that price at harvest time.

The result was twofold: one, a family living on the farm and making a living from farming, could no longer afford to produce diverse crops; rather they had to produce what the government wanted so as to insure a guaranteed price at harvest; secondly, corporate farms began to move into agriculture, because they had a secure profit guaranteed by the government. To make sure that nothing happened to that guarantee, they joined in creating a corporate farm lobby to influence farm policy. It is one of the most effective in Washington, as we just saw this month when $40 billion in subsidies for farmers were passed in the form of a farm bill. Now less than two percent of Americans live on family farms and make their livelihood from farming. Nonetheless, Secretary Benton’s goal of producing massive amounts of grain to feed us, and the world, came true. But it did not come without costs to an important segment of our society and lifestyle.

Another issue: I love to play golf. SW Florida is a golfer’s paradise. I can be struggling with personal issues, financial decisions, family matters, or a whole host of things, but then go out on the golf course and for a few hours all those things go away. I love to play the game, whether it’s driving, pitching or putting.

But have you ever noticed what golf courses are doing to the environment? Most of the new and beautiful courses have enormous berms constructed around them. These divert the flow of water south towards sea level, thereby inhibiting the cleansing and nutritional process nature designed. Further, for golf courses to be beautiful and green means significant amounts of fertilizer are felt to be necessary. But fertilizing has to be offset by watering. SW Florida is now in a drought caused in large part by our own misuse of water, plus, our water resources are enormously polluted, due to runoff of fertilizer not only from golf courses, but also farms and our yards. So should we play golf and fertilize our lawns, even when to do so causes harm to the environment?

Back to the issue of stem-cell research, it is now possible through ultra-sound, to monitor the progress and well being of the fetus in a mother’s womb. That’s important for in vitro fertilization, because that process normally requires inserting several fertilized eggs at one time into a woman’s uterus. If more than one succeeds in attaching to the wall of the uterus, it means the possibility of twins, triplets, quadruplets, and even quintuplets. But when a mother discovers that potentiality has happened to her, does she have the right to remove all but one? And what if those discarded fetuses could be used in research to save lives? Does that change the equation?

The question is not, when does life begin, but is it okay for good reason to end life? Or in the case of stem cell research, is it okay “to use life,” “to save life?”

So “do no harm” is complicated no matter what the issue, isn’t it? Here’s a second ethical guideline:

The development of the use of surrogate mothers, enabled by in vitro fertilization, has created its own unique set of ethical issues. One is that surrogate mothers are nearly always poor. They are carrying a baby for money. Doesn’t that pose an ethical dilemma? And what if a woman was capable of pregnancy, but chose not to, because of the nature of her work, the urgency of other tasks, or simply not wanting the inconvenience of being pregnant for nine and a half months? Is that ethically acceptable, for the rich to pay the poor to carry babies for the rich? While it’s great that science is able to do what it does with in vitro fertilization, it isn’t so simple

There are other issues confronting us with ethical dilemmas. I spent a good part of yesterday morning at the Nations Association, where our own Dr. Bill Benyak is a board member. My class in civic engagement at FGCU had as its project assisting with the Family Food Fair sponsored by the Nations. It was very painful for me to watch several hundred mostly Hispanics get in line so as to receive bags of groceries. There’s something demeaning about charity, even when it comes from well-intentioned and good people like those at the Nations. Why is it in this land of plenty that we have to have hunger and poverty? Why do the poor have to count so much on places like the Nations?

Several years ago, a priest named Gustavo Gutierrez, went from Rome back to his native Peru. It was and is an economically challenged nation, with a small coterie of rich and a vast population of poor. One of the things Gutierrez observed was that the rich gave charity to the poor. That was good, right?

Except that he also observed that the system which necessitated charity was self-perpetuating: The poor stayed poor and the rich stayed rich. That system kept the poor not only poor, but dependent upon the whim or inclination of the rich to be generous. The rich felt good about their charity, but their charity kept things in place – vast numbers of the poor and miniscule number of rich.

Gutierrez began a revolution of the system by basically answering the question, why are the poor, poor? His response was what is known as liberation theology, in which the church proclaimed that the gospel to the poor was not simply salvation and doing good by giving to the poor, but also addressing economic systems which reinforced pervasive poverty.

So the second ethical guideline is “do good, when possible.” And sometimes the obvious good is not the best good. Sometimes the issue is much deeper than it appears to be.

So what are some are some of the possibilities for stem cell research in the future, that our present policy in Washington is refusing to support? Here are some possibilities:

n Human stem cells can be used to generate specialized cells in a laboratory and then be transplanted to replace damaged cells in the body. For example, in the case of a spinal injury, a certain type of stem cells could be generated to replace damaged tissue.

n The newest therapies in research on stem cells and diabetes involve generating clusters of cells that produce insulin to replace those that a diabetic person’s immune system destroys.

n In the study of human development, stem cells could help researchers determine why, in the early stages of development, some cells become cancerous or how genetic diseases develop. This could lead to answers as to how they might be prevented.

n For research purposes, stem cells may be useful as a testing ground for new drugs before they are used on humans. Rather than using animal subjects, stem cells might solve the ethical dilemma of using animals for medical testing.

n Stem cell research has the potential to bring new treatment options to patients with Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease, heart disease, burns, and spinal cord injuries.

So the question is, why in the name of heaven have we tolerated what this administration has done on this issue? Why have we let ideology triumph reason and need? Those are questions that we must take seriously in this next election and make sure we are aware of the stem cell research policies of those we vote for.

There is a new book out, entitled The Secular Conscience, which has an interesting subtitle: Why Belief Belongs in Public Life. Though a well-known secularist, the author, Austin Dacey seeks to make the point that the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade short circuited a much needed national debate on the issues of life and when and how we make decisions to end life, even when embryonic. As a result, issues such as stem cell research began an ideological battleground that should never have happened.

He charges that a decision like Roe v. Wade was an instance of the court creating a “bracketing strategy” by which they thought they could settle the issue of “abortion rights” by simply ruling on its constitutionality and by simply setting aside, or “bracketing,” the issue of fetal life. The net result was that liberals feel the issue of abortion is not up for debate, and non liberals are visceral in their reaction to the ignoring of the issues of fetal life.

We may like it when the Court rules the way we think, but the truth is that in a democracy, the legislative process is a much more appropriate arena for resolution of controversial issues, flawed though it may be.

We will pause now for 7½ minutes of brief questions as a part of our Conversation Café. The Service and Support Council will provide microphones for you to speak into.

[1] A sermon presented May 25, 2008, as the final in a series on “Science and Faith,” followed by the Conversation Café of All Faiths Unitarian Congregation, meeting at the Crestwell School, 1904 Park Meadows, Ft. Myers, FL, with the Rev. Dr. Wayne Robinson, minister.