Once again, the Congress and the President are heading toward a showdown on the issue of stem cell research. By a vote of 63-34, the Senate passed the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act (S5), which eased the restrictions placed in 2001 on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research by President Bush. The House passed its version of the bill three months ago, by a vote of 253-174. President Bush has vowed to veto the bill: "This bill crosses a moral line that I and many others find troubling. If it advances all the way through Congress to my desk, I will veto it." Although polls indicate that a majority of Americans support embryonic stem cell research, this means little to the President, who vetoed a similar bill passed by Congress last year.

This begs the question: what are stem cells, and why does this issue garner such a passionate debate among politicians of both parties? Stem cells are cells which have the ability to form any cell in the body, given the correct conditions. Potentially, these cells can be used to cure a variety of diseases, from juvenile diabetes, to cancer, to Alzheimer's and Parkinson's dementia, to spinal cord injury. Although adults do have these cells, they are few in number, much more difficult to harvest, and, experts say, may not be as versatile as the stem cells obtained from human embryos.

Herein, however, lies the rub. In order to harvest embryonic stem cells, the human embryo is inevitably destroyed. This is the reason the President, and other Christian conservatives, oppose the process. They believe human life begins at conception, and therefore, to destroy a human embryo amounts to nothing short of "infanticide." In a statement, the President said, "I believe this bill will encourage taxpayer money to be spent on the destruction or endangerment of living human embryos."

This begs another question: what do Muslims believe? Most American Muslims support research on human embryos, according to a survey conducted in 2001, and many Muslim countries also support the practice, although the debate has not eluded the Muslim world. Islamic law also appears to be on the side of supporting embryonic stem cell research. According to Dr. Muzammil Siddiqui, the Shar'iah makes a distinction between "actual life" and "potential life," with "actual life" given a higher priority for protection in the law. An embryo created in a dish during the process of in vitro fertilization - generally considered permissible in Islam - has the potential to become a human being, but it is not yet a human being. Thus, to destroy it to harvest stem cells would not be considered destroying human life.

Moreover, there is a debate among Muslim scholars as to when exactly the soul enters into the fetus, rendering it "actual life": some say 40 days, others say 120 days, depending on how they interpret this hadith of the Prophet (pbuh): "Each of you possesses his own formation within his mother's womb, first as a drop of matter for forty days, then as a blood clot for forty days, then as a blob for forty days, and then the angel is sent to breathe life into him." Either way, an embryo which is just days old and is destroyed after stem cells are removed would still not be considered destroying "actual life," and thus should be permissible.

And one must not forget the ultimate purpose of this research: to use the knowledge God has given us to cure disease, alleviate human suffering, and save human life, which the Qur'an says God has made sacred. According to Dr. Siddiqui, "It is claimed by the experts in the field that the research on stem cells has great potential to relive human disease and suffering. If this is the case then it is not only allowed, but it is obligatory (fard kifayah) to pursue this research." The argument in favor of stem cell research from the Islamic perspective has been excellently summarized in an article by Michele Weckerly in the Journal of Law and Religion published by the Rutgers University School of Law.

Yet, I suspect that the support of most Americans for embryonic stem cell research does not come out of religious conviction. This is in contrast, however, to the opponents of stem cell research, most importantly President Bush, who base their opposition, it seems, on their personal religious belief. While I respect this religious belief, I find it interesting that the President would veto a bill expanding stem cell research in the name of preserving life (albeit in the form of unborn, frozen embryos). Yet, he took the nation into war against another country which had nothing to do with 9/11, neither attacked nor was going to attack the United States, and did not have weapons of mass destruction. As a result, more than 3200 American soldiers, along with an estimated 650,000 Iraqi civilians, have been killed. This is in addition to the tens of thousands that have been maimed and injured.

All of these people were living, breathing, and already born. Doesn't this "cross a moral line"? Doesn't the President find this "troubling"? Or are some lives are more sacred than others?

Well, unrelated to Segwaying Iraq into this, Siddiqui's argument is pretty strong. And, the benefits are fairly important enough to warrant at least considering the issue deeply. However, I am somewhat disturbed by the idea of manufacturing embryos and then destroying what could have become human life. Now, this also begs us to open the can of worms called the "Destiny vs Free Will" debate (qadar, qadaa, etc...). Since these embryos did not become humans, God willed that they not be and as such, would never have been humans anyway = aborted, miscarriage, death at childbirth and so on. Yet, they are being destroyed by willful human hands and not by acts of God (nature for y'all of the atheistic persuasion).

If these were cells from the placenta or replacable fetal blood cells, then no problem. But, destroying potential life sounds like the mechanization of mass death that, cough cough, industrialized wars are today.

One should always be weary of the overstatements made by scientists. Stem cells do have potential to do quite a bit, but its just that: the potential. How come no one mentions the problems involved in harnessing stem cells for application to various diseases? Every type of scientific research is justified on the grounds that it can do the miraculous. My guess is that acknowleding the obstacles in the way of stem cell research would not serve the interests of this particular argument. Scientists like to keep our gaze focused on a future that never arrives, in which the existential problem of suffering no longer exists. Don't get me wrong, I'm not inherently against stem cell research. If we have hadith that specify when the soul enters the body, that might be enough to justify stem cell research. Religion teaches us to work towards the minimization of suffering and the preservation of life, it does not teach that suffering may ever be overcome, on earth that is.

As I understand it, all these embryos are coming from fertility clinics, where many eggs have to be harvested and fertilized for any one of them to be given a chance of becoming a baby for families experiencing fertility problems.

But after the families select a fertilized egg, zygote, embryo, for insertion into the uterus, the rest are more or less left to rot (proverbially) in a freezer. At a certain point, the clinics dispose of the embryos, whether or not they are used for further medical research. Either the families do not renew their storage contract, or the clinics run out of room. Either way, the embryos are destroyed.

The imagined ideal that these embryos are stored indefinitely in a state of cryogenic bliss is simply false. The "infanticide" is already taking place.

That being said, the process of creating stem cells from embryos also causes the destruction of the embryos. I abhor the loss of life either way, but if the embryos are going to be destroyed, should we not try to make their destruction medically beneficial instead? (This brings to mind organ donation as opposed to abortion; that is, if you don't consider the zygote or embryo to be life.)

Meanwhile, the Bush administration is trying to create adoption programs for the embryos, as an alternative to destruction either way, since of course their argument is that zygotes and embryos have human rights...all while often denying the rights of "actual" human beings on this side of the birth canal. What a world.

Confusing and conflating the life outcomes of those already born with those of the unborn seems like magical thinking -- the tongue is quicker than the brain. OK, debate the morality and ethics of the unbirthed. Or, let's talk morality and ethics among the aware, responsible, free "birthed", like us. But let's not use the one to somehow justify or excuse the other. And why single out one human or even one nation for living with cognitive dissonance, when it's the human condition?

But its an ethical boundary we are crossing. Traditional muslim mindset tells me that abortion happens only under the condition of a possible injury to the mother. To "harvest" the life out of somehting with no life avoids that the decision outside these constraints (of injury to the mother) has lied with Allah (S) alone.

Without taking a position for or against (I simply don't know enough) ... one should always doubt any claims that one technology or another is either (a) going to feed all of the hungry or (b) cure all of the diseased. Unbridled stem cell research seems to fall neatly into the latter.

>>> one should always doubt any claims that one technology or another is either (a) going to feed all of the hungry or (b) cure all of the diseased.

yet we have all the technology to feed, clothe and educate every human being .. already