Research vindicates Bush on his position on stem cell research

"If human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough."

-- James A. Thomson

A decade ago, Thomson was the first to isolate human embryonic stem cells. Last week, he and Japan's Shinya Yamanaka announced one of the great scientific breakthroughs since the discovery of DNA: an embryo-free way to produce genetically matched stem cells. Even a scientist who cares not a whit about the morality of embryo destruction will adopt this technique because it is so simple and powerful. The embryonic stem cell debate is over.

Which allows some reflection on the storm raging since the 2001 announcement of President Bush's stem cell policy. The verdict is clear. Rarely has a president -- so vilified for a moral stance -- been so thoroughly vindicated. Why? Because, as Thomson puts it, Bush was made "a little bit uncomfortable" by the implications of embryonic experimentation and decided to draw a moral line.

In doing so, he invited unrelenting demagoguery by an unholy trinity of Democratic politicians, research scientists and patient advocates who insisted that anyone who would put any restriction on the destruction of human embryos could be acting only as a "moral ayatollah," as Sen. Tom Harkin put it.

Bush got it right. Not because he necessarily drew the line in the right place. But because he insisted on requiring scientific imperative be balanced by moral considerations.

History will look at Bush's 2001 speech and be surprised how balanced and measured it was, how much respect it gave to the other side. He so finely and fairly drew out the case for both sides that until the final few minutes of his speech, you had no idea where the policy would end up.

Bush finally ended up doing nothing to hamper private research into embryonic stem cells and pledging federal monies to support the study of existing stem cell lines -- but refusing federal monies for research on stem cell lines produced by newly destroyed embryos.

The president's policy recognized the existing lines might dry up, prove inadequate or become corrupted. He therefore appointed a President's Council on Bioethics to oversee ongoing stem cell research and evaluate how his restrictions were affecting it and what means might be found to circumvent ethical obstacles.

More vilification. The mainstream media and the scientific establishment saw this as a smoke screen to cover his fundamentalist, obscurantist and anti-scientific tracks.

I sat on the council for five years. It was one of the most ideologically balanced bioethics commission in the history of this country. That balance was reflected in the reports it issued, documents of sophistication and nuance that reflected the divisions both within the council and within the nation. One recommendation was to support research that might produce stem cells through "de-differentiation" of adult cells, thus bypassing the creation of human embryos.

That Holy Grail has now been achieved. Largely because of the genius of Thomson and Yamanaka. And also because nature requires only four injected genes to turn an ordinary adult skin cell into a magical stem cell that can become bone or brain or heart or liver.

But for one more reason as well. Because the moral disquiet that James Thomson always felt -- and that George Bush forced the country to confront -- helped lead him and others to find some ethically neutral way to produce stem cells. Providence then saw to it that the technique be so elegant and beautiful that scientific reasons alone will now incline even the most willful researchers to leave the human embryo alone.

© 2007, Washington Post Writers Group