Fertile soil for rational debate.

God and the Embryo: Religious Voices on Stem Cells and Cloning Brent Waters and Ronald Cole-Turner, (eds.) (Georgetown University Press, 2003, 228pp) ISBN: 087840998X, $26.95.

THIS BOOK IS A COLLECTION of essays by various Christian and a few Jewish writers on the topics of stem-cell research and human cloning (both cloning to produce children and cloning for the purpose of research on embryos). A range of religious attitudes can be found both in the II essays in the book and in the nine appendices, the latter of which represent the official positions of several religions.

One key value of the book is that it offers to the reader clear explanations of the complex issues involved in stem-cell research and cloning for research purposes. For example, almost universal opposition to cloning to produce children is quite different from the hotly debated issue as to whether cloning should be permitted for the purpose of research on embryos, research that might significantly reduce the impact of debilitating diseases, like Alzheimer's or Parkinson's.

Or again, several of the authors in this volume make what they take to be a crucial distinction between stem cells taken from embryos specially created for research purposes and research on stem cells extracted from embryos that are leftovers (over 100,000 of them) in fertility clinics around the United States. The former sort of stem-cell research is more controversial than the latter, although some authors in this volume reject both sorts.

Because both stem-cell research (unless it involves stein cells gathered from adults) and cloning for research purposes involve judgments regarding the moral and legal status of the fetus in the very early stages of pregnancy, these recent debates often overlap with more familiar debates regarding the moral and legal status of abortion. But the issues involved are often quite different. For example, the positive medical and social benefits that might result from stem-cell research have no clear analogue when a pregnancy is aborted for personal reasons. Further, if there is no hope of ever finding women who wish to carry to term excess embryos in fertilization clinics, why not research on these embryos (which would otherwise remain frozen or be discarded) so that some positive benefit could occur?

Readers of Conscience will probably note two shortcomings in this book. First, although a few of the authors of essays in this book are women, little evidence is given regarding how contemporary feminist theory could or should come to bear on the issues of stem-cell research and cloning. This is odd given the fact that embryos have until recently always been enclosed within women's bodies.

Second, although a range of religious views is presented in this volume, this range is not as wide as it should be. The view that even a fertilized egg is a human person, and hence ought not to be a research subject, is defended by several authors in the book. Other authors defend the view that the fetus does not acquire personhood status until about 14 days into pregnancy, when the possibility of twinning is over and when the "primitive streak" appears.

But none of the authors offers a careful defense of the view (compatible with the majority view in Roe v. Wade) that the fetus should not be accorded personhood status until much later in pregnancy, say when a central nervous system starts to function or when viability occurs. This is also a significant omission, if only because many reflective religious believers hold it (and for good reasons, I think).

OVERALL, HOWEVER, THIS BOOK is a useful, readable guide to the issues involved. I would especially recommend the long article by Gene Outka on "The Ethics of Human Stem Cell Research." Outka is a traditionalist Christian, heavily influenced by the thought of St. Augustine, who moves from an initial opposition to stem-cell research to a reluctant support of it in certain circumstances. Although his view is, in my opinion, too much influenced by the immediate hominization view, wherein there is a person present from the "moment" of conception, he struggles with the issues involved with an intellectual honesty that is refreshing and instructive. He is a worthy opponent to those who may have a much more favorable view of stem-cell research and cloning for research purposes.

Finally, it should be noted that the issues treated in this book create strange alliances. In the appendices one learns that extremely negative approaches to stem cell research and cloning for research purposes are shared by the Vatican, the Eastern Orthodox churches, the United Methodist Church and the Southern Baptist Convention. A more favorable view is defended by the United Church of Christ, the Presbyterian Church and the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations. There is no monolithic religious view regarding these issues. This should, or at least could, provide fertile soil for rational debate rather than acrimonious diatribe.

DANIEL A. DOMBROWSKI is Professor of Philosophy at Seattle University and author al many books, including (with Robert Deltete) A Brief, Liberal, Catholic Defense of Abortion.