Stem cell research …

MY LAURA HALL argues against tern cell research ("Price to pay," June 1). She writes, "All forms of human life are worth incalculably more than their industrial, market, scientific, or even therapeutic use value." As good as that sounds, its terms are quite vague.

What "form" is she referring to? The male sperm? The female immature egg? The ovulated egg? The fertilized egg? Which of these stages does she consider to be "a form of human life" and which are not? Nature makes no such arbitrary distinctions. A natural discard rate for each of these forms rims from about 99 percent for sperm to about 30 percent for embryos. Stem cell research seeks to use embryos discarded in the in vitro fertilization process. How is this so different from what nature already does?

Hall also bases her opposition on hypothetical scenarios such as an establishment of an industry of embryo production. To use this as a basis to deny proper research to find a cure for Alzheimer's disease is unethical.

She also implies that any living tissue constitutes a potential human life. Yet there are many living tissues that are not potential humans, such as cancer.

She also confuses biology with theology. A human is a human because at the core, a human is a soul, something that cannot be defined by biology, but can only be properly described in religions terms.

Christian dogma seems to be of more interest to Hall than compassion or the relief of human suffering. She might take a different view ff she had a loved one who suffered from Alzheimer's. At this time, stem cell research offers the best hope for help against such terrible diseases,

Arnold Nance

Los Alamos, N.M.

Amy Laura Hall replies:

For approximately two decades after the first in vitro fertilizations, most Western bioethicists agreed that a human embryo after fertilization, even in vitro, carried serious moral value. This tentative agreement hinged oil the sense that a human embryo, as incipient human life, should be treated with respect beyond the bare, minimal standards regarding other human tissue. That some scientists now endeavor to craft embryos from other human tissue seems not to negate this distinction.

It is difficult to discern a "natural" discard rate for early embryos in our polluted environment. Regardless, there is an important moral distinction between what we will accept as regrettably inevitable in nature and what we will actively countenance in human practice. Without entering the complicated debate over ensoulment, I continue to believe that Christians should presume the moral value of the human embryo at the earliest stage; we should hope that every embryo after fertilization is bound for life. If current rates of embryo cryopreservation make this hope absurd, I believe that we must reconsider cryopreservation. There is currently a growing global commerce in what are termed "fresh" embryos for research purposes. That is not a science fiction "what it"; it is present reality. Whether one believes that biotech companies will seek more lucrative applications for embryonic stem cells depends perhaps on one's estimation of the medical-industrial complex.

Finally, many of my concerns indeed emerge out of my engagement with Christian dogma, and my sense that some scientists are following a dubious dogma of their own. Consider a recent quote in the London Times from Robert Edwards, the scientist who perfected IVF: "It was also about issues like stem cells and the ethics of human conception. I wanted to find out exactly who was in charge, whether it was God himself or whether it was

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