Stem cell research's future looks bright

Dick Seaberg, according to The Wall Street Journal, is a 70 year-old antiabortion Republican who lives near Los Angeles in one of California's most conservative districts. Yet on a recent Saturday morning he was at a Starbucks in the Avenue of the Peninsula mall wearing a homemade sandwich board that read, "Please sign petition for stem cell research."

How could Dick Seaberg, you might wonder, or any staunch conservative for that matter, wear something like that? Isn't that going against their convictions, their ideologies about the sanctity of life, even at the embryonic stage?

The Journal article lets Seaberg explain: "I have a grandson with juvenile diabetes, we'd like to find a cure," Mr. Seaberg says.

And in this apparently simple answer lies the Antigonian hierarchy of values that will shape the development of stem cell research in this country. Recall Antigone, who despite having a high respect for the laws of her society, felt the need to break the law due to the overarching respect for her brother, Polynices. Defying the laws of the state was out of character for Antigone, but for her, certain values could override other values.

Like Antigone, Dick Seaberg is a man of strong convictions. One can tell this by his very antiabortion stance — that is, a belief that life has inherent value, even when it does not visibly look human. But when his own grandchild gets a hideous disease, he must, like Antigone, abandon a respect for earlier convictions due an overriding conviction of familial devotion. Whereas Antigone's devotion was demonstrated by an honoring of a dead relative, that of Seaberg is realized through the attempt to alleviate the suffering of a living one.

This Antigonian devotion to one's kin is that factor which I believe will result in a change of policy regarding embryonic stem cell research in this land. Almost everybody has a family member or very close acquaintance whose suffering can be alleviated by the therapies that can come out of serious stem cell research. (I use the term "serious" to distinguish it from the languishing and often unfruitful adult stem research which opponents of embryonic stem cells research often point out as a viable alternative.)

This desire to help one's kin is so powerful that it has the capacity to override otherwise ethical principals and blur even political-party lines, as occurred in Seaberg's case, the "conservative." Soon, more conservatives will eventually lessen or completely reverse their stem-cell-research convictions when they realize that one of "their own" is directly affected by a disease that can be helped by the research.

This trend is beginning to show up in California, where proponents of stem-cell research have decided to bypass the federal limitations on embryonic stem cell research by proposing an initiative to appear on the ballot box come November — an initiative which would effectively funnel $3 billion of state money into stem cell research over the next 10 years. It is no surprise that this movement is being led by many wealthy Californians whose children have juvenile diabetes, or who suffer from it themselves — and yes, many of these people are antiabortionists or hard conservatives. The linkage of such a ballot drive to the Antigonian complex is also substantiated by the fact that nearly 85 percent of Californians have a family member or close acquaintance with one of five conditions — Alzheimer's, diabetes, heart disease, Parkinson's or spinal-cord injury — that potentially could be treated with stem cells.

Eventually, I believe the White House will get the message that serious stem cell research is something which cannot be denied to the public. If Bush himself does not soon realize that to continue to restrict such research is to indirectly harm millions of Americans who daily suffer from disease, then he will soon be overwhelmed by a grassroots rallying cry of a citizenry who, like in California, are driven by the powerful Antigonian complex to help one's kin. This movement will mark a clear return to the ideal of the American family upon which this very democracy was built.

Steven Kamara is a politics major from Manhasset Hills, N.Y. Email him at skamara@princeton.edu.