Professors Debate Stem Cell Research

Physician and biomedical ethics expert William Hurlbut squared off against molecular biology and public affairs professor Lee Silver on the controversy surrounding embryonic stem cell research Monday in a panel moderated by former University president Harold Shapiro GS '64.

Hurlbut and Silver agreed that science struggles to set a non-arbitrary line during human development to separate a mere clump of cells from a human being entitled to human rights.

Hurlbut, a consulting professor at Stanford University, interpreted this arbitrariness as reason to define life as beginning with conception, which would enable the definition to encompass all the possibilities of an embryo's ontological standing. Silver, on the other hand, argued that the "fuzzy edges" of life defy any scientific evidence that life begins at any specific stage.

"There is an internal unity and unbroken continuity of development from fertilization to natural death," Hurlbut said. "The same evidence undercuts the claims that the early embryo is an inchoate clump of cells."

He added that recent evidence shows that the coordinated activity in embryonic stem cells suggests an "implicit whole that guides the parts" in the early stages of human development.

He said that this implicit whole "endows the embryo with its human character and its inviolable moral character."...


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