Regents versus research?

By Richard Holland

Whose university is this, anyway? I’m talking about the University of Nebraska, and today I’m particularly interested in the medical school, where we are having a donnybrook about embryonic stem cell research. Several regents are bent on controlling what can be investigated and what can be taught using embryonic stem cells.

Those regents, whether they realize it or not, are expressing a conservative religious point of view. Is that how decisions should be made for a great state university?

So why get so worked up? It is quite simple.

The University of Nebraska Medical Center is a public university—it is not a Catholic university, it is not a Jewish university, nor is it a Methodist university, nor a Lutheran university, nor an Episcopal university, nor a Muslim university, and it certainly isn’t a Buddhist university or an atheist university.

It is a public university, open to all and all knowledge, and thus a place of religious tolerance, so dear to America’s historical success—taxpayers of all faiths support this university. It follows, in our view, that we should not insist on our religious views as opposed to the religious views of others. It is a place of learning, not indoctrination. It is a place where ideas, regardless of their origin, are examined and added or subtracted from the tree of knowledge.

Yet strangely enough, today, some may be considering measures in our public Nebraska medical school that are reflective of evangelical and conservative religious doctrines—those ethics fly directly in the face of other religions and ethics about when life begins. The question of when life begins is not the same for thousands of Nebraskans.

Let’s take a look. Some say life begins when the fetus loses its gills and tail at eight weeks. Some say it is when the fetus’s face begins to look human at 10 weeks. Others believe that personhood occurs when the fetal brain has matured and becomes conscious of itself, around 26 weeks. The Jewish religion says that a fetus becomes a human person when it is half emerged from the mother’s body. Many others believe that personhood only starts after birth, when the newborn is separated from the mother.

And as long as I am commenting about when life begins, please observe how other embryonic stem cells are presently being destroyed. Tens of thousands of fertile embryos are frozen or actively destroyed in fertility clinics throughout the U.S., including Ne­braska. Thousands upon thousands more are destroyed or made useless in the act of thawing. Yet there has been only a single example of anyone in the U.S. picketing a fertility clinic.

Instead, some are not accepting of the medical science and of the need for extra embryos and their use in research, where we are trying to save or prolong life in just about every area of human disease—cancer, heart, eyes, the regeneration of organs, and the cure or amelioration of a whole host of diseases, such as Parkinson’s, diabetes, Lou Gehrig’s, spinal cord injuries, and on and on. Nebraska has its full share of every one of these life-shortening conditions.

Before we make any decision about stem cell research, let’s recognize the compromise of Legislative Bill 606, which is now the law of Nebraska—approved by a vote of 48-0. The legislators decided to accept presidential guidelines for embryonic stem cell use. You might also consider carefully the damage that would be done to the University of Nebraska Medical School by restrictions that would doom re­search—why should a top-flight scientist want to work where research is constrained and why would a granting agency be inclined to fund such a place?

Whose university is this, anyway?

For more information on UNMC’s current stem cell research, visit http://www.unmc.edu/stemcells/policy.htm. For more discussion of the stem cell debate at UNMC, visit http://app1.unmc.edu/PublicAffairs/TodaySite/sitefiles/today_full.cfm?match=5518. A story on the recent breakthrough by UNMC researchers regarding stem cells can be found at http://www.omaha.com/article/20091023/NEWS01/710239907.

Related Story:

Both adult and embryonic stem cell research needed

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