Ethics Interrupted
What does it mean when even embryonic stem-cell researchers have some qualms about their work?
by Christine A. Scheller
posted 09/29/2005 09:00 a.m.

You're in a burning room with a wheelchair-bound adult and a freezer full of blastocysts. You can't save both the tiny embryos and the adult, so whom do you save?

I was asked this question by Hans S. Keirstead, an embryonic stem-cell researcher at the Reeve-Irvine Research Center in Southern California. He wanted to show that, when push comes to shove, all of us grade human life on a sliding scale. What he didn't realize was that he was talking to a woman who had once chosen the life of the embryo growing inside her over her own life as she had envisioned it.

Ever since speculation over the healing potential of human embryonic stem cells began circulating after scientists isolated them in 1998, I have wondered what I would do if scientists ever extracted a cure for my child's incurable disease from tiny human lives like the one I had cherished. I set out to find answers by talking to two stem-cell scientists about the ethics of their work. It was a remarkable entry into a world of half-truths, hesitancy, and awkward logic.

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