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PACHOLCZYK SKEWERS STEM CELL HYPE

Fr. Tadeusz Pacholczyk’s talk on embryonic stem cell research at St. Francis Xavier Church, Hunt Valley, on March 9 couldn’t have been set against a more dramatic backdrop.

The day before, pro-life Maryland state senators had tried and failed to filibuster to death a bill to fund embryonic stem cell research.

Just hours before he spoke, the State Senate had easily passed the bill – albeit somewhat amended.  All that remained now was for the Senate bill to be reconciled with the already-passed House bill, and for the governor to sign it.

Father Pacholczyk, in a talk he said could be dubbed, “Cutting Through the Spin on Stem Cells and Cloning,” explained to about 100 pro-life listeners why they had to keep on fighting.

Embryonic stem cell research and its necessary companion, cloning, “represent the worst kind of medical research possible, where the powerful exploit the weak and vulnerable,” he said.

“We as Catholics have a privileged vantage point.  I think it is essential that we take part in this debate.”

Pacholczyk, who as director of education for the National Catholic Bioethics Center has testified before many state legislatures on the stem cell issue, noted that “The people on the other side are very skilled in inviting people in wheelchairs and 6-year-old girls with diabetes to legislative hearings.

“There is an incredible amount of hype out there!”

To illustrate his point, Father played a video clip of a talk by Christopher Reeve, in which the late actor made two dubious points:  embryonic stem cell research holds the promise of treating and curing many diseases, and you’re joining an esteemed list of people when you support it.

Father Pacholczyk, who has a doctorate in neuroscience from Yale as well as undergraduate degrees in biology, molecular biology and chemistry, then proceeded to counter “the great media myths” about ESCR with scientific facts.

Chief among the myths is the false assertion that embryonic stem cell research holds the most promise in treating and curing diseases.

ESCR has in fact treated and cured nothing, but Father Pacholczyk cited numerous successful treatments, using adult and umbilical cord blood stem cells, for heart attack repair, spinal cord injuries, sickle cell anemia,  leukemia, and other diseases.

A prime argument used by ESCR promoters – that they are only going to use embryos left over from in vitro fertilization – is a fraud, said Pacholczyk.

They assert that because these frozen embryos may one day be discarded, it’s morally allowable, even laudable, to destroy them for research purposes.

But Father pointed out that nobody working in in vitro facilities wants to be the one who throws away the unwanted embryos, because they know deep down that it is a moral evil to destroy these tiny human beings.

“There’s a lot of cloudy thinking going on here!” said Pacholczyk.

“The proponents, in effect, are saying, ‘Somebody over there is going to do an evil; quick!  Let’s jump in ahead of them and do another moral evil.’”

Worse yet, he said, the stem cells from frozen embryos are not really useful for research, because they are rejected by the recipient.

“The proponents of ESCR know that; they are just saying that to get their foot in the door.”

The way to get rejection-proof cells is through the cloning of an embryo using stem cells donated by the patient himself.

The human embryo created would be, in reality, “the donor’s identical twin brother,” Father explained.

“If we give up the argument on frozen embryos, we lose the debate,” he warned.

Asked why there is such a strong push for embryonic stem cell research, Father Pacholczyk named several factors.

First, whenever researchers prepare a stem cell line from embryonic stem cells, which can reproduce for years or even decades, they get a patent on the line.

“There’s a lot of money to be made,” he explained.

In addition, he thinks that some scientists are tempted by the thought of having “the raw power of controlling the tree of life.  And there’s the possibility of acclaim – Nobel prizes and so forth.”

There are also “cosmic dimensions” in play, Pacholczyk believes.

In a New York Times interview, a stem cell researcher said that “Everybody needs a fairy tale”; in other words, if we can beat Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s and diabetes, maybe we can live forever.

“It’s a vision that’s being floated that we can overcome death,” Father asserted.  “Religious language is being used, and the scientists are the new high priests.”

Finally, he noted, we live in a culture of death; if you start protecting little embryonic human beings, you cast abortion into doubt.

“Nobody sitting in this room has any memory of being an embryo,” said Father.  “But God remembers.

“Human life has been entrusted in our hands.  That life is by nature vulnerable and weak.  We must become the voices of those that have no voice of their own.”