Putting Genies Back in Bottles 

One of the smaller issues to pop up this last election cycle was that of stem cell research. This has popped back up on my radar thanks to Instapundit who thinks this idea for global ban is a bad idea. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the stem cell debate is often cast as an extension of the abortion debate. I say unfortunately, because I think it deserves to be debated on it's own merits, and that's not happening. For what it's worth, I haven't made up my own mind on whether stem cell research, and cloning (which is directly related) are good things are bad things. My gut reaction lately has often times to approve of a ban, at least temporarily. Right now we have a bottled genie, and we're rubbing furiously on the lamp. When I have argued for stopping stem cell research, I have come at it from the perspective of not wanting to let a genie out of that bottle, until we're damn sure we want to. Once we let that genie out, we're stuck with consequences. I'm going to try to fame this in terms of another genie that we've already let loose... the nuclear genie.

I've recently wondered, if we knew then what we know now, would we have gone forward with nuclear research as we did? The quick and easy response by many would probably be no, we would have stopped ourselves. Nuclear weapons, the Cuban Missile Crisis, reactors melting down, nuclear waste that we don't know what to do with... nothing good came out of this. Of course I'm not so fast to judge nuclear reactors, and I personally think that there should be used more in use today. Don't forget too, that the same technology that lead to nuclear weapons, lead to particle accelerators that allowed us to expand our knowledge of the universe in amazing ways, and have lead to advances in things like quantum computing, and much more. Had we not released the nuclear genie, how much of this would exist today? The problem is that you have to take the good with the bad, and people hate doing that.

As this relates to stem cell research today, nobody every talks about the bad in the main stream media. The reason is because the debate is cast as an extension of the abortion debate. So, the consequences are always the "sanctity of human life". That's probably a very poor argument, seeing as how the life we're talking about is usually a frozen embryo that will be destroyed anyway. No, the consequences that concern me are the technologies and practices that will occur in the future as a result of this research. Maybe I watch too much science fiction, and have seen Gattaca one too many times (it's a great movie by the way, and very thought provoking). I'll just throw out some things I've quickly brainstormed:

• Genetic profiling (ala Gattaca)
  
• Selective breeding
  
• Genetically engineered diseases tailored to specific groups of people (bio-weapons)
  
• Body part farms from throw away people
  
• Unforeseen genetic mutations

The immediate argument is that some of these things are going to be possible with research being done today, not as a result of stem cell research and cloning. True. Then again, some atom splitting technology was being worked on before nuclear weapons. But nuclear weapons poured gas on that little fire. How much more quickly would we run into these issues if stem cell research went forward full bore?

The major problem with banning stem cell research, besides stopping all the good that would come of it, is that it probably wouldn't work. Some scientists, in some country somewhere would continue on, and that genie would be let loose anyway. Yet somehow I think it's unfortunate that we're framing people who attempt to block stem cell research as heartless bastards that wouldn't cure Reagan's alzheimers, or let Christopher Reeve walk. The debate is still worth while. Let's not rush forward with so much zeal that we allow ourselves to be blinded to the negative consequences that are very possible. If being an obstructionist in a losing debate means that we're more aware of these issues when I lose that debate, and that we may avoid them, then I'll be glad to be called an obstructionist.