Differing views of stem-cell research 

CSI panelists take Jewish, Catholic, Muslim and scientific approaches to contentious subject

Staten Island Advance - April 8, 2005

With the winds of change blowing, a panel of doctors offered College of Staten Island students differing perspectives on the controversial topic of stem-cell research yesterday.

The discussion came one day after Dr. Elias Zerhouni, director of the National Institutes of Health, testified before a panel of United States senators, telling them that “mounting evidence” exists in support of loosening restrictions on federal financing of embryonic stem-cell research.

The roundtable was cosponsored by the Office of the Deans of Sciences and Humanities, the Pre-Medical Society, the Muslim Student Association, Hillel and the Catholic Campus Ministry, and the panelists came at the subject through Jewish, Catholic and Muslim lenses, as well as from a purely scientific viewpoint.

In 2001, President George Bush limited government researchers to pre-existing embryonic stem-cell lines, many of which have become useless over time. The potential to save human lives, which some argue comes at the cost of potential lives, made embryonic stem-cell research a contentious issue in last year’s presidential election.

Dr. Faiz Khan, an emergency and internal medicine specialist at Long Island Jewish Medical Center who is also an assistant imam, asserted that the political debate over embryonic stem-cell research is unscientific and ‘ideologically tainted. Dr. Khan argued that more funding should go to research on stem cells harvested from adult tissue, which have shown much better results.

“Of the 56 diseases worked on, zero cures have come from embryonic stem cells,” he said. “They are unstable, and have no known benefits.”

Nevertheless, he said further research is justified by embryonic stem cells’ vast adaptive qualities.

Dr. Allen Bennett, president of the Association of Orthodox Jewish Scientists, agreed.

The panelists noted that, while both Jewish and Muslim law forbids conceiving embryos for the sake of research, that research should be done on the hundreds of thousands of embryos created with eggs unavoidably harvested for in-vitro fertilization (IVF), most of which end up being destroyed.

Marilyn Martone, a doctor of theology at St. John’s University, said the Catholic Church is in favor of stem-cell research, but not any using embryos from IVF. Because the church sees destruction of embryos as tantamount to abortion, there is no chance of a change in policy under a new pope, she said.

By Ben Eben Newhouse
Reprinted here with permission from the