Of Stem Cells and Beavers

An interesting story I caught on the web today: Breakthrough isolating embryo-quality stem cells from blood:

Scientists have developed the first reliable way to extract stem cells from blood without adding contaminating markers

A major breakthrough in stem cell research—a new tool that could allow scientists to harvest stem cells ethically—will be announced at the Institute of Physics’ conference Physics 2005 in Warwick later today (Tuesday 12th April).

Professor Josef Käs and Dr Jochen Guck from the University of Leipzig have developed a procedure that can extract and isolate embryo-quality stem cells from adult blood for the first time. This new technique could unlock the stem cell revolution and stimulate a boom in medical research using stem cells.

...The cells are currently taken from aborted human foetuses, an issue which has led to controversy and opposition in many parts of the world.

Despite such breakthroughs, and despite the fact that all successful uses of stem cells for medical treatments have come from adult stem cells, not from those “harvested” from human embryos, we will still continue to see a push to use embryonic stem cells.

Some of the reasons for this might be complicated, but many know deep down that what’s at stake in the debate for and against embryonic stem cell research is whether or not one side or the other successfully makes a powerful statement about the humanity of the embryo, just as the humanity, or personhood, of the fetus cannot be conceded by those favoring legal abortion. If a person is a person no matter how small (or no matter how self-aware or how much of a will they possess or are able to express), then the pro-lifers win.

I am reminded of something that I recently read in an oddly fascinating book by Roger M. Carpenter, The Renewed, the Destroyed, and the Remade: The Three Thought Worlds of the Iroquois and the Huron, 1609–1650 (Michigan State University Press, 2004). The Huron Indians by custom and belief attributed personhood to certain animals; it was not a human personhood, Carpenter explains, like Disney portrays in his cartoon animals, but a personhood nonetheless of a different sort, a Being Other Than Human, who could “aid, cure, or assist humans if treated with proper respect and ritual.” Beavers were hunted, but only during certain limited times of the year.

When the fur trade with Europeans and white traders accelerated, however, and the beaver pelts brought a good return of new goods desired by the Hurons, the ritual respect that limited the hunt of beavers got in the way of trade. So what happened?

Carpenter writes, “In order for the Iroquoian thought world to accomodate the demands of the fur trade, the beaver had to be divested of its personhood and transformed into a commodity that made the acquisition of trade goods possible.”

Which is what happened. The belief simply disappeared--as did most of the beaver population--abandoned for the sake of getting more and more of the new trade goods. While few of us would agree with the traditional view of the Hurons about the beaver and its (non-human) personhood, we have to admit that the change they embraced follows a psychology similar to what we see today: the personhood of embryos, or the humanity of the fetus, is denied because it gets in the way of something else we want (a possible cure, sexual “freedom”). In the case of stem cells, the embryo is seen as simply a commodity.

In the Jewish Holocaust, the personhood of the Jews, their humanity, was stripped away. If you can change how you view something, then you can change how you use or abuse it. If you change sex from a sacred life-long inviolate bond between a husband and wife into a biological pleasure to be indulged between consenting parties, well, you have what we have, a social and cultural disaster of the first magnitude. To keep the degenerate view of sex viable, it helps greatly to deny the personhood of the God-given fruit of sex.