The Stowers Institute and Its Impact On Kansas Politics

The Stowers Institute for Medical Research is an organization located in Kansas City, Missouri, that is dedicated to researching how cells might be altered to cure diseases.  The group was founded by wealthy Kansas City residents Jim and Virginia Stowers who gave $50 million to launch the Institute.  Today, the endowment has grown to approximately $2 billion.

Currently, their 600,000 square-foot facility in Missouri engages only in stem cell experimentation involving adult stem cells due to restrictions against live human embryonic experimentation in that state.  However, the group is looking to expand within the next ten years by building a new laboratory specializing in the life-destructive human embryonic stem cell research.  According to the Stowers' web site,  "The expansion will take place in a jurisdiction favorable to stem cell research that is as near to the original facility as possible, but the exact location and timing of construction have not yet been determined."

Stowers has a history of redefining the English language to cover for the fact that they support and intend to engage in human cloning.  While the Institutes claims to oppose human cloning, they only oppose (at least for now) the cloning of a human being that would be brought to term and birthed, otherwise known as "reproductive cloning."  However, they support SCNT or Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer -- that is, the process of cloning where the child created is destroyed at some point in time before birth.  This is sometimes referred to as "therapeutic cloning."

It should be noted that both reproductive and therapeutic cloning use SCNT to create the embryo in a "test tube."  The process is EXACTLY the same.  The only difference is that, theoretically, in once case the cloned embryo is birthed (there are no documented cases of this having been successfully accomplished), and in the other case the baby is killed during the process of experimentation.

There has already been overtures made to build a Stowers' human experimentation lab in Kansas.  However, efforts to bring the unethical human stem cell industry here are being bravely opposed by Rep. Mary Pilcher Cook.

It is believed that Stowers intends to use its financial and political muscle to defeat its sharpest critic, Pilcher Cook, this fall, and to lobby hard to prevent legislation that would hinder their expansion plans into the Sunflower State.

Kansans for Truth In Politics opposes the Stowers Institute's efforts to bring live human embryonic stem cell experimentation and human cloning, (SCNT), to the State of Kansas, or any state, for that matter.  Killing innocent human beings at the earliest and most vulnerable stages of development for monetary or scientific gain simply cannot be tolerated by a civilized society.

To learn more please read the informative booklet "Bioethics in an Age of Emerging Biotechnologies" by Cheryl Sullenger.

[K-TIP ardently supports the efforts of Rep. Mary Pilcher Cook to stop research organizations from bringing the unethical experimentation on live human embryos to Kansas.]

Pilcher Cook fights to fell ‘the poison tree’ of stem cell science

By Loren Stanton

Kansas City Star, Saturday, May 06, 2006,

If you believe limiting stem-cell research should be a primary concern of state government, then you would be quite well served as a constituent of Mary Pilcher Cook.

The 18th District House member from Shawnee consistently is in the forefront on this controversy, doing battle wherever and whenever she can to work against the possibility of certain kinds of the research taking place in Kansas.

Pilcher Cook always has been strongly anti-abortion, but she has taken an especially active role on the stem cell issue.

Talk to or listen to her on this topic and you quickly realize she is highly committed and highly informed. Opponents would say she is misinformed, and she, of course, says the same of them.

Pilcher Cook is not thoroughly absorbed in this issue merely because it’s a convenient political stance in a traditionally conservative district. There is a sincere and fervent dedication to the cause.

How deep is the commitment? Well, three of her adult children have a 50 percent chance of developing the devastating hereditary Huntington’s Disease. Despite that, she said she and her children share an abhorrence for embryonic stem cell research and all have asserted they would decline any treatment or cure that might be derived from it.

That, of course, is one family’s personal choice. But as a legislator, Pilcher Cook is using her position to work toward removing the choice of all other Kansans to someday avail themselves to possible embryonic stem cell-related cures and treatments. Last year she sponsored legislation that would have made it illegal to conduct certain kinds of stem cell research in the state. The bill, which did not pass, also would have made it illegal to import to Kansas and dispense any medical advance developed through those kinds of research.

Critics say such measures are wrong because they impose the morality of a few on everyone else. They say that the embryonic stem cells to be employed for research will be destroyed anyway. They say sacrificing a few cells for possible cures of fully developed individuals is the correct moral and ethical choice. They say if the research is not conducted here it will be conducted elsewhere anyway.

To each of those points, Pilcher Cook’s response is firm and consistent. If we availed ourselves to such advances, she says, “We would be eating from the poison tree, and it’s never right to intentionally kill one life to benefit another.” And she adds, “In this country, we never have endorsed an end-justifies-the-means approach.”

This is an issue clearly tied up in the pro-life debate, but even some staunch abortion foes have voiced support for embryonic stem cell research.

That’s illogical to Pilcher Cook, who does not understand those who draw a distinction between sacrificing a few cells for research and aborting a developing fetus.

But her objections, she explains, go beyond ethics and morals. She also sees it as a practical matter, because she believes we’d all be better off if research time and money went in other directions. Adult stem-cell research is not objectionable to her because it doesn’t involve using a fertilized egg that has begun to divide. And she’s convinced the chances of medical advances are much greater in this area. Those on the other side, of course, beg to differ.

And the debate goes on.

This issue is a natural for Pilcher Cook. In addition to being a pro-life conservative, her favorite topic in high school was biology. It might have become her profession, but she said that when it came time to decide on an advanced degree she already had started a family and the wages in most biology careers didn’t look adequate for supporting that family. She still is fascinated by biology and vigorously reads scientific research and journals that would put most of us to sleep.

She is highly confident of her knowledge and her position and hopes more opportunities arise that will allow her to publicly debate the issue with representatives of the other side.

For anyone who might accept the challenge, here’s a piece of advice: Be very prepared and very informed.

Too High a Price For Scientific Knowledge

By Cheryl Sullenger
San Diego Union-Tribune (January 27, 2000)

Ever notice how life sometimes imitates Star Trek? Upon reading a recent newspaper article about embryonic stem cell research, I was reminded of a Star Trek Voyager episode entitled "Nothing Human." In this episode, set in the 25th century, Voyager crew member B?Elanna Torres is attacked by an intelligent, but very alien species who affixes himself to her vital organs in order to survive, endangering Torres' life. 

The doctor soon discovers that if the creature is removed from Torres, it will die. To save the lives of his two patients, the doctor calls upon the aid of a holographic scientist, a duplicate of a doctor whose expertise in xenobiology is unsurpassed in the Alpha Quadrant. This scientist, it is soon discovered, gained his medical knowledge, through often brutal and lethal experiments on a subjugated race of people who suffered greatly due to his experimentation. 

His knowledge, gained from the deaths of countless innocent people, would certainly help save the lives of Torres and the alien being. However, Torres is appalled by the prospect of benefiting from such experimentation and rejects any treatment derived from research on unwilling human subjects, even if it costs her her life. Torres and the creature are eventually saved, but the Voyager doctor is left with a moral dilemma. Is it ethical to use research gained at the price of so much intentionally inflicted suffering and loss of life? In the end the scientist's program is deleted along with any knowledge it contained. The price of that knowledge, counted in the lives of his dead and maimed research subjects, was just too high.

Now back to the year 2000 and embryonic stem cell research. Today, scientists at a California laboratory acquire human fertilized eggs discarded from In Vitro fertilization procedures. They allow the cells to divide until the embryo is perhaps several dozens of cells large. These embryonic cells have the remarkable ability to grow into any number of tissue types without the usual cellular aging that takes place in adult stem cells, which cannot be use as successfully. The embryonic cells are then stripped from the membrane that would soon become a placenta and are forced to grow into whatever tissue the scientists require. 

This technology has recently been hailed as a brilliant breakthrough that can benefit all of humanity. Animal organs, including eyes, have already been produced in this way. Soon, whole human organs may be grown for possible transplant, saving thousands of lives. 

But what of the cost? Each fertilized egg is a complete human being at the earliest stage in his life. If successfully implanted into a womb, a child would grow and thrive to full maturity. In reality, a person has to die each time new cells are harvested from a growing embryo. The cost of this research is innocent human life.

Researchers defend their actions by saying that the human embryos used in their experiments were discarded embryos that no longer served a purpose. There is danger in this line of reasoning. Scientists, with one sentence, have created a whole class of throwaway people based upon their personal lack of respect for the value of each human life. The quest for knowledge has blinded them to the fact that they are no different from the scientist in that Star Trek episode, to whom knowledge was everything and the lives of his subjects were nothing.

When each individual life is not valued, all life is devalued. We live in a schizophrenic society that chooses shampoo based on the fact that no animals were used in the testing of the product, but will in turn defend the potentially massive loss of human life caused by embryonic stem cell research and its application. Where will this devaluation stop? We have already seen the destruction of over 34 million lives through abortion because the unborn have been devalued. We are seeing the sick and elderly quietly euthanized in hospitals and nursing facilities, because their lives are deemed to no longer warrant such basic care as food and hydration. 

This callus disregard for human life is creating a cold, uncaring, and unconcerned society characterized by child abuse, mass murder, suicide and violence in the schools and work-places of America. Further degradation to the value of life cannot be tolerated. Another way must be found to solve the medical and societal problems that face us.

The brave new world of biotechnology in this year 2000 has met science fiction. Now it is time to ask ourselves the hard questions needed to maintain ethical integrity in our own time. Is the cost too high? If the cost is the life of even one innocent person then it must be determined, for our own sakes as well as for those who will come after, that the price is beyond our moral ability to pay.

Sullenger is the Chair for Kansans for Truth In Politics.

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