Stem Cells

In all the commentary about stem cell research, I haven’t seen any yet from someone who has actually gone through IVF. I have.

Eight years ago, I went through two rounds of IVF. I injected myself with drugs to stimulate massive egg production, until my ovaries were the size of softballs. My husband injected me with drugs to improve my uterine lining, to increase the odds that when we did put embryos back in, they would implant. I went in for daily blood tests to monitor my estrogen level, and every other day near the end of the cycle, I had an ultrasound to check on the eggs. When the time came, I went in for a surgical procedure to harvest the eggs from my ovaries. My husband contributed his sperm, and in a process known as ICSI, each of my eggs was individually fertilized with one of his sperm. The resulting fertilized eggs were allowed to grow for a couple of days, then they were graded based on a number of factors believed to be predictive of the likelihood that they would implant and continue to grow into a baby.

At the time of implantation, we were looking for grade A, 8-cell embryos. Out of approximately 16 eggs harvested each cycle, we were lucky to get 4 grade A embryos to put back. The others weren’t good enough to put back, and definitely weren’t worth freezing.

I go into this level of detail because, despite all that effort, none of those embryos ever turned into a real, live baby. So perhaps you’ll understand why I can’t agree with the ‘life begins at conception’ crowd. If conception were all it took, I’d have more than one child today. Those collections of cells had the possibility of becoming a human being if a lot of things went right, but most of the time, something doesn’t go perfectly, and the embryos fall to implant. Or they implant in the wrong place. Or they implant but fail to continue to develop. Or you can even end up in a kind of limbo for a month, with some indication that maybe something is happening, only to find a month later when an ultrasound can be done that whatever was happening in there, it wasn’t a baby growing in the uterus.

So, yes, I’m in favor of stem cell research using left-over, unused IVF embryos. There’s enormous potential to save the lives of actual, living human beings, at the cost of embryos which, yes, have some potential to become human beings, but are very unlikely to do so. The alternative is to throw away those unused embryos.

I have a hard time understanding why some people are opposed to using these unused embryos, unless they are also opposed to IVF in general. Maybe they just weren’t aware of how IVF worked; maybe IVF will be their next target. I have read some comments expressing unease about IVF once people learned how the process worked. I think one important factor to keep in mind is that in nature, in unaided conception, this process happens regularly, too. That is, not every fertilized egg implants, not every embryo survives, and often this happens without any awareness that there was ever a fertilized egg. Imagine the overpopulation that would occur if every fertilized egg became a human being!

The Marketplace of Ideas

I recently received an email from a conservative friend of mine with a pointer to an article complaining about liberal foundations. The article referred to “Pewgate”, a controversy of the role of the Pew Charitable Trusts in the passing of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law. Pew had made grants to create the impression that a mass movement was afoot. This kind of simulation of grassroots activism is often called Astroturf activism.

Astroturfing certainly wasn’t invented by Pew; conservatives engage in it regularly, as well. Remember the explosion in decency complaints made to the FCC about broadcast television? Turns out the vast majority of them were orchestrated by one small group.

At the same time that conservatives are complaining about so-called liberal foundations using grants to influence politics, there’s a bill working its way through Congress that would allow churches to endorse political candidates without risking their 501(c)3 status.

The House of Worship Freedom Restoration Act would amend the IRS code to allow church leaders to endorse candidates within the church building, as long as such endorsement wasn’t being broadcast on radio, TV, the internet. That last little part has cost the support of some conservative groups, who don’t want any restrictions.

My conservative friend wants to tax and dissolve foundations, because he believes they’re the primary funders of liberalism in America. One thing I’ve never understood about him, and others of his ilk, is that if they’re so sure their ideas are absolutely right, why do they want to shut down all opposition? Are they afraid their ideas will lose in open debate? Nothing is preventing preachers from endorsing political candidates or causes right now; they just have to do it outside the church. Do they need the authority of the pulpit before their political positions are muscular enough to stand up in the marketplace of ideas?

If the House of Worship Freedom Restoration Act passes, will conservatives be trying to undo it in thirty years because liberal churches are taking advantage of it, too?

We're looking for an objective approach that looks at both sides.

So says John Calvert, arguing in hearings in Kansas that so-called “Intelligent Design” be taught along with evolution in Kansas schools. This is an interesting use of the word “objective”, and not one I’m familiar with.

There’s nothing objective about Intelligent Design, and there’s nothing scientific about it. It may be dressed up in scientific language, but it’s not science. ID starts with the answer, and tries to backfill the scientific method to give the appearance of science.

The answer ID starts with is that there is intelligence behind certain features of the universe. They claim that these features are better explained by an intelligent design mechanism rather than the unguided process of natural selection. The proponents of ID can claim to be doing science, but that doesn’t mean their process is scientific.

Let’s review how science works. You make observations, you formulate a hypothesis, you test the hypothesis. So, we could give them the benefit of the doubt for the moment, and say that rather than starting with the answer, they’re starting with a hypothesis that “life and its diversity were designed by intelligence for a purpose.”

But we immediately run into a problem. We can call it a hypothesis, but that doesn’t make it science. Before we can call it science, it has to be a falsifiable hypothesis. The ID folks say their theory better explains the observation of the universe than evolution, but they fail to indicate any way in which it could fail. There are no implications of their hypothesis that could be tested and show that the hypothesis is wrong.

Ok, so it’s not science. What’s the harm in teaching it in schools? The harm is exactly because it’s not science. This battle is not really about evolution vs. creationism (which is effectively what ID is, dressed up in more sciency-sounding language), it’s about what science is and how science is done. We’re already a pretty scientifically illiterate society; if we start teaching high school kids that things like ID are science and just as valid and objective as evolution, then we’ve given up. We ceased to give them any mechanism for evaluating whether something is valid or not.

The scientific method says that ID is not science, so ID proponents want to throw out the scientific method. They regard evolution as “antagonistic to theistic religions”, and leading to “non-theistic belief systems, laws, morals, and ethics that sharply conflict with those derived from the major religions of the world.” Does this really sound like they’re looking for an objective approach? To paraphrase from The Princess Bride: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.