Political Economist

The following essay was written for my personal heurstical purpose. It is about human stem cell research. Even though current debates associated with stem cell research have been usually accompanied by religious, moral assumptions, I tried to exclude those metaphysical aspects of the debate. I hope you will have a good chance to think about the issue while reading this essay.

Stem Cell Research, Human Cloning, and then What?

Scientific research on human stem cell has been developing rapidly for the last decade or so. Since the cloned sheep Dolly appeared in the world in the late 1997, another pioneering research on embryonic stem cell engineered by a group of Korean scientists started to decorate news headlines nowadays. However, those who propose human cloning research should consider the potentially detrimental repercussions of the research on human dignity, the danger of the polarization of a society by genetics and various other unknown consequences of the research.

One of the most frequently cited examples for the human stem cell research is its potentially positive contribution to the longevity of human life. It is also argued that scientists can prevent probable diseases in advance due to the broadened knowledge of human stem cell. However, it will be possible only at the expense of the violation of human dignity.

Firstly, until now the most dangerous human disease does not originate from the mutation of human cell itself but from various infectious diseases. It is widely known that at least 3,500 children are still dying in every 10 minutes from chronic malnutrition due to persistent poverty and various contagious diseases such as typhoid fever, measles and AIDS in South Asia and most African countries. Talking about extended longevity of life expectancy and the necessity of preemptive medical care cannot be justified in the name of human dignity once we consider these nonsensical deaths.

Secondly, there is another aspect of human dignity in this matter. Suppose that you can produce one part of the human body due to stem cell research. Imagine that David can buy one eye and one left leg from a university hospital refrigerator. With these supplemental organs, suppose that David can replace his weak or problematic organs whenever he wants, then how can he define himself as a human or an individual? How do we know whether David is still David if he has replaced every part of his body with a stronger or younger head, hands or heart? How, then, is it far from the callous story of humanoid? Can we still talk about human dignity in this new brave world?

In this sense, the problem is not about technology or our lack of sufficient medical knowledge, but about the political and social structure in which those who are suffering from various infectious diseases do not have access to proper medical treatment. Thus those who argue that stem cell research is necessary for human beings’ welfare are misleading the reality. We are suffering not from sufficient medical knowledge but from lack of proper ways to distribute this knowledge.

We should also consider the demographic aspect of stem cell research. Let us suppose that there are no serious technological barriers to human cloning. In other words, suppose that it is perfectly possible to produce another human body with the same genome. By this juncture, it will be also likely that scientists can differentiate potentially problematic gene from healthy and intelligent gene. From this stage, it is not so great a leap to imagine various situations where every parent competes to transplant better or perfect gene into their test tube babies.

Since it is quite natural to think of a society where most human beings are not totally different from those of the society today, in other words, there is no guarantee that future society will be filled with more moralistic and egalitarian citizens, it is also plausible to imagine endless competition among people to achieve perfect genome for their children. Like the present days, this endless competition among citizens of a future society will be determined by uneven economic and political powers in the end.

If that is the case, nobody can guarantee that the society will not be divided into two or three groups of people; those who have superior gene and those who do not have. From this stage, society will be burdened not only with unequal income distribution, which has been the main determinant of social classes, but also with unequal genome distribution, which will be an advent of the “brave new world,” genetically divided new caste system. In this way, another serious socio-political problem will be derived from seemingly scientifically neutral stem cell research.

Someone may argue that the government can control the goals and objects of stem cell research or at least will succeed in channeling the direction of the research; The government can protect the society from potentially detrimental negative side effects of the research through its active policy intervention. For example, the government can ban human cloning even though it allows cloning itself on animal experiments; It is also possible to imagine that the government will pass a law encouraging medical researches based on the knowledge of human stem cell but banning commercial trades of human embryo and genome and so and so forth.

However, we do not have to be economists in order to see how the government has been misguided by the myth of free market fundamentalism, and how various social institutions have shown their lethargy in protecting public goods in front of market forces. We do not have to be nuclear physicians to see how previous scientific researches on atom have brought unexpected catastrophes to society. The idea that the government or more abstractly speaking ‘society as a whole’ can draw clear lines between positive potentials and usages of the stem cell research and its probable abuses is hardly convincing. There is no such an omnipotent institution or a spiritual mighty which can easily overcome this slippery slope.

Thus, if we have to decide to do something about stem cell research, it is not about whether we should ban or allow the research; it is about when we should prohibit this potentially detrimental play which is still being committed by arrogant ‘as-if-God-human creatures.’ All arguments on the potentially beneficial effects of stem cell research such as extended human longevity, preemptive medical care are based on a total ignorance of the political and socio-economic complexities of human society.