Reuters reports that Geron has launched a clinical trial of embryonic stem cells for treating spinal cord injury. It's a Phase I trial, that is, it is intended to establish safety, not to cure the problem, though they are using spinal-cord injured people as research subjects. Of course, Geron funds its own research, meaning that the details are proprietary (though subject to FDA oversight.) The Bush-era ban on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research without banning the research entirely created to a huge market for investors in research that might result in extraordinarily remunerative therapies. We might expect further clinical trials very soon, if this Phase I trial is successful.Market-driven research, though, has ethical difficulties that aren't absent from university-based research or federally-funded research, but that are exacerbated in that realm. First, scientists are aware that unnuanced publication of adverse events or unsuccessful trials means a likely drop in stock value as investors grow skittish. (Failure to publish adverse events seems to have been a factor in the death of Jesse Gelsinger in a genetic-engineering trial years ago.) So they're likely to avoid publishing negative results if they can. (Again, there is oversight in this trial.) A related problem: removal of the traditional publication imperative is likely to slow research progress overall, as unsuccessful areas of endeavor are repeated in multiple labs. Third, we can expect to pay a premium price for privately-derived therapies--a question of justice in access to medical care. This in turn contributes to spiraling health-care costs, and an increasing gap between health-care haves and have-nots. And this just scratches the surface.Catholics who hold to the magisterial instruction to respect embryos as persons will be in a difficult spot if these therapies prove successful. The question is cooperation with evil--may Catholics avail themselves of therapies derived by ethically-unacceptable means? We do have a precedent--vaccines derived using tissues grown from aborted fetuses were judged to be acceptably remote from the original abortion, thus OK for Catholics. Pushed on this question, Richard Doerflinger opined years back that Catholics still ought to avoid such vaccines wherever possible. I wonder, though--given the highly politicized nature of the debate on embryonic stem cells, will Catholics be instructed to avoid these therapies? Stay tuned...

Lisa Fullam is professor of moral theology at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley. She is the author of The Virtue of Humility: A Thomistic Apologetic (Edwin Mellen Press).

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