Despite controversy, steady progess

This is the point of writer Deborah Blum's August 1st essay "A Pox on Stem Cell Research."

How is the research to advance from hopeful to helpful when national policy inhibits the work from being done? Discouraged proponents have suggested that the president’s decision, which was applauded by conservative religious groups, has the potential to keep American science locked in the past.

The past, however, seems to encourage a more optimistic outlook. Medical progress has stirred religious and moral objections throughout history — objections that were overcome as the benefits of medical advances became overwhelmingly obvious.

After detailing some instances of when medical advances, initially perceived as an affront to God, was widely accepted, the essay delves into the story of Dr. Edward Jenner, who introduced inoculation to prevent infections from the deadly smallpox -- admist objections from religious leaders and even fellow doctors.

He designed a procedure using fluid from cowpox lesions to inoculate against smallpox. His approach was untested, but Jenner believed it offered the potential to become “essentially beneficial to mankind.”

The religious authorities of Jenner’s day viewed smallpox inoculation as an affront to God and man. A widely published British sermon was titled “The Dangerous and Sinful Practice of Inoculation.” American clergy warned that inoculation usurped God’s power to decide the beginning and end of life. Only hypocrites would undergo the procedure and still pray to God, one theologian declared.

Jenner responded with a risky demonstration of his idea. In 1796, the doctor persuaded his own servant to allow the man’s 8-year-old son to be inoculated with cowpox material; two months later, Jenner exposed the child to smallpox.

The experiment was a success...

Why despite antagonizing moral and even expert opinion has the healthcare innovation -- the inoculation for prevention of infectious disease -- been so widely practiced since?

Not by hyping the potential of his ideas, as some stem cell supporters occasionally have done, but by doggedly gathering more evidence based on more inoculations. Fueled by his success, the practice spread, and smallpox rates plummeted. In time, the life-saving merits of inoculation eventually overwhelmed all doubt; the evidence, Jenner wrote, became “too manifest to admit of controversy.”

The writer's premonition is "stem cells — especially the amazingly versatile cells evident in early human development — have the potential to hold off our own ministers of death. And history suggests that’s a proposition too powerful to remain shackled by the moral strictures of the moment."