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But on Friday, with growing clamor to remove Bush's restrictions from the public, scientists, biotech firms, and members of his own party, Frist, the Senate majority leader, proposed some minor "adjustments" to the President's policy. The Tennessee Republican, noting that only 22 ESC lines (not 78) are actually suitable for research, said it is time to allow federal funding for research using excess embryos created for fertility treatments—in other words, among those 400,000 frozen embryos that "would otherwise be discarded and destroyed."

Frist, while opposing human cloning, said both federal funding and federal oversight of ESC research should be expanded, "carefully and thoughtfully staying within ethical bounds." Of course, how ethical is it to switch from prohibiting the killing of embryonic human life to encouraging it—even paying for it?

Yes, Dr. Frist maintains he is still pro-life. "I believe human life begins at conception," Frist said, as if to reassure activists of his pro-life credentials. "It is at this moment that the organism is complete—yes, immature—but complete. An embryo is nascent life. It's genetically distinct. And it's biologically human. It's living. This position is consistent with my faith. But to me, it isn't just a matter of faith. It's a fact of science."

Frist went on: "Our development is a continuous process—gradual and chronological. We were all once embryos. The embryo is human life at its earliest stage of development. And accordingly, the human embryo has moral significance and moral worth. It deserves to be treated with the utmost dignity and respect."

But in his next breath, with a marvelous burst of logical and moral incoherence, Frist stated, "I also believe that embryonic stem-cell research should be encouraged and supported." In other words, treating human embryos with "the utmost dignity and respect" includes killing them for research—as long as that killing is done "within ethical bounds." That's pro-life?

Regardless of the senator's political and moral calculus in deciding to oppose the Bush compromise, the flip-flop was unnecessary. As Frist himself noted, scientists and ethicists are now looking at four methods that may yield pluripotent stem cells that do not involve the destruction of nascent human life. These are extracting stem cells from dead embryos; developing non-harmful ways of extracting them from living embryos; extracting them from artificially created "non-embryos"; and reprogramming adult cells to pluripotency via fusion with embryonic cell lines. New scientific research indicates that adult stem cells may indeed be more flexible than previously believed, and more available.

No, none of these approaches has been proven, but they show great promise—and without the moral dilemma of killing human embryos. As Frist noted, "[T]hey may bridge moral and ethical differences among people who now hold very different views on stem-cell research." That bridging is essential if we as a society are to move ahead on this potential scientific breakthrough without the kind of acrimony that has accompanied the abortion issue, for example.

The scientific and the moral questions have barely begun to be asked. Our society has survived for centuries without killing human embryos for research. We have time, and we must take that time to carefully weigh our choices at this pivotal moral moment in history.

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August (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49