StemCell Therapy

In this article, we will look at why the Orthodox Church has taken such a stand, how the Church has always stood uncompromisingly for the personhood of the human embryo, and what moral alternatives exist for stem cell research.

Destructive Embryonic Stem Cell Research

By Father Mark Hodges

THE STEM CELL DEBATE IS about the value of human life at its beginning. Stem cells are blank cells which can become all 210 different kinds of human tissue. Researchers hope that someday these cells could provide cures for all kinds of serious diseases, even repairing vital organs. We have stem cells throughout our bodies, but they are most abundant in human embryos. Retrieving embryonic stem cells, however, requires killing those human beings. A raging debate is going on in our nation now, over whether or not taxes should support killing human embryos in order to harvest their stem cells for experimentation.

Many influential groups have taken sides in the debate. You can guess where the pro-abortion groups stand. Drug and research companies also defend destructive embryonic stem cell research. Pro-life groups, of course, are against it. The Vatican condemned research using human embryos as gravely immoral, because removing cells kills an unborn child. U.S. Senator Sam Brownback debated on the floor of the senate: For the first time in our history, it is accept-able for medical researchers to kill one human being to help save another. Ultimately, what lies at the heart of this debate is our view of the human embryo. The central question in this debate is simple: Is the human embryo a person or a piece of property? If unborn persons are living beings, they have dignity and worth, and they deserve protection under the law from harm and destruction. If, however, unborn per-sons are a piece of property, then they can be destroyed with the con-sent of their owner.

The one, holy, catholic and apostolic Orthodox Church has spoken, too. The position of the Orthodox Church on embryonic stem cell research is, In light of the fact that Orthodox Christianity accepts the fact that human life begins at conception, the extraction of stem cells from embryos, which involves the willful taking of human life the embryo is human life and not just a clump of cells is considered morally and ethically wrong in every instance.

In this article, we will look at why the Orthodox Church has taken such a stand, how the Church has always stood uncompromisingly for the personhood of the human embryo, and what moral alternatives exist for stem cell research.

Legally, research on human embryos is allowed because of a faulty Supreme Court definition of personhood at viability (when a baby can lie out-side his/her mother) as worthy of state interest for legal protection. In fact, the whole pro-abortion argument hinges on the lie that there is such a thing as human life which is less than a person, hence unworthy of legal protection. Conversely, Orthodox Christians affirm the image of God from the beginning of human life, and we do not say at any time of development that one human being is of less value or less of a person than another human being.

Stem cells can be harvested from human embryos only by killing them, while the Church has always denounced any such killing and championed the sanctity of human life. The earliest extra-biblical document we have, The Didache, commands, Do not murder a child by abortion, and warns that the Way of Death is filled with people who are murderers of children and abortionists of Gods creatures (5:1-2). The Epistle of Barnabas, another very early document, was equally clear: You shall not destroy your conceptions before they are brought forth. Both call the embryo a child. St. Clement of Alexandria, in the third century, used Luke 1:41 (where John the Baptist leaped in Elizabeths womb) to prove that an embryo is a living person. He calls the earliest conceived embryos human beings who are given birth by Divine Providence, and he condemns those who use abortifacient medicines , causing the outright destruction, together with the fetus, of the whole human race.

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