This is especially true of “claims” made for the use of fetal brain tissue and all embryonic tissue. Thus far, all the “claims” are, at best, “promises”—hoped-for results that have not been achieved. Yet, the journalistic promises continue to overestimate and overpublicize “claims” and “promises” that fetal brain tissue can alleviate Parkinson’s Disease, Alzheimer’s or Diabetes. A single chapter (#10, pp. 163-181) in Dr. Bernard Nathanson’s book, The Hand of God (1996) is a welcome dose of reality: the “claims” are many; the scientific results are none!

More recently, a reasoned exchange of letters-to-the-editor in Commonweal magazine (v. 126 [4/13/99] pp. 4; 29) highlights the question you pose. Robert J. White, M.D., is a professor of neurological surgery at the Medical School of Case Western in Cleveland who writes to critique a point in a prior article of Daniel Callahan.

I will let Dr. White speak for himself but recall the caution above on getting the scientific facts straight. Dr. White writes: “I have significant disagreement with him (Callahan) having to do with fetal brain cellular implantation when he says a particular treatment for Parkinson’s disease shows a ‘fair promise of working.’ Nothing could be further from the truth. He is referring to a formal brain operation requiring the stereotaxic introduction and depositing of a small fetal brain graft in a precise location in the depths of the patient’s brain. As a neurosurgeon, I am totally unimpressed by the clinical results from this invasive surgical methodology. What little symptomatic improvement has been reported in a very small group of patients is simply the result of an injury artifact caused by the instrument, a thin cannula used for placing the transplant, causing damage to the brain tissue. (This is the exact region where a destructive legion is created to reduce symptoms of this tragic neuro-degenerative disease.)”

“This operative procedure is immoral for two reasons. First, it utilizes living fetal brain tissue (requiring six to eight fetuses to gain sufficient cerebral material for grafting), and second, the operation itself is without scientific justification—it is simply a bad operation.”

“If all that were not bad enough, there is now a NRH protocol requiring that a control group be created within the framework of this type of surgery in which the patients have burr holes (small openings) placed into their skulls, even though they will not undergo the complete operation (the intracerebral placement of the brain transplant) until some future time. These of course are not totally safe undertakings. This has been referred to as a sham or placebo surgery; one more serious moral dilemma.”

“Callahan’s overall critique of contemporary medical research in this country can be amplified. He is perfectly right that we overestimate and overpublicize this work and often promise miracles that will never come to pass. More importantly, biotechnology has lost its moral compass in its attempt to redesign the human existence” (Commonweal, p. 4).

D. Callahan replies that Dr. White is correct about this particular procedure. But, he also notes that if any significant results did turn up further research would escalate to improve outcomes. Callahan is correct that the public, science and the media would be thrilled—a way to deal with terrible disease.

Callahan then asks and answers your question: is Dr. White prepared to say that even if it works it would be wrong—to allow continued suffering rather than an immoral use of fetal tissue?

“I think I might now and then be prepared to say that, but I doubt most people in our society would, and surely not most of those with the disease. I am troubled to be saying that, but it seems to me reasonably accurate. The trouble with the research imperative is that it makes skeptics like myself look cold and indifferent; we uphold high principle while our fellow creatures suffer. I can’t feel too good about that, even if that is the way I think I must go” (D. Callahan, p. 29).

The “high principle” to be defended of course is no direct lethal assault on any moral innocent! Pope John Paul II has already focused on this problem in Evangelium Vitae (3/25/95): “Furthermore, the number of embryos produced is often greater than that needed for implantation in the woman’s womb, and these so-called ‘spare embryos’ are then destroyed or used for research which, under the pretext of scientific or medical progress, in fact reduces human life to the level of simple ‘biological material’ to be freely disposed of” (EV, n. 14).

Already the British have approved of some forms and uses of what they call “therapeutic cloning.” The National Institutes of Health have announced (August 2000) new “Guidelines” for the Clinton Administration to use human embryos in cell research. The editors of The New York Times have already dismissed “Congressional opponents who consider the clumps of embryonic cells a form of life that must be protected” (NYTimes [8/25/00] p. A-24).

The Church is not the enemy of medicine or true science. But, science must be at the service of the human person not vice versa. Even little human beings, indeed the tiniest human beings, must not be converted into mere means or “stuff” even for the benefit of other human beings, even suffering human beings.