Testimony

My name is Sheila Decter. I am the Executive Director of JALSA, the Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action, a Boston based civil rights group, and I am testifying to ask your support of Senate Bill 515.

Advances in medical technology often present complex ethical, legal, and public policy issues. Our discussion of these issues necessarily and appropriately is informed by the wisdom we bring from our various religious and ethical traditions. We do not urge the state to adopt a particular policy because it is consistent with a particular religious tradition. Questions dealing with the beginning and end of life are particularly complicated for a public body, particularly in a country with hundreds of different religious faiths and philosophical codes. It is incumbent on public officials to synthesize these many approaches and look to the development of public policy that provides the greatest good to the total community, and, to the extent possible, allows individuals to follow the dictates of their own religious observance and moral principles.

Members of JALSA have been actively involved in issues of genetic research and health policy. Most recently, we came before this committee to advocate for genetic privacy, protection of individual genetic information, and broad informed consent policies. The resulting legislation attempts to balance the needs of patients, researchers, caregivers, and health care business professionals.

Today, we ask the committee to support the advancement of stem cell research, specifically embryonic stem cell research. We believe it is appropriate for the legislature to consider and try to resolve the issues of public ethics this research raises, appropriate to set research boundaries, and appropriate to maintain public visibility and transparency in this area.

Too often our social policy lags behind our scientific accomplishments. The whole area of in vitro fertilization, for example, has raised the important ethical issue of what to do with embryos created during the course of fertility treatment but not so used. Prior to the advent of embryo stem cell research, these so-called “extra” embryos were destined to be destroyed. Today, they are of potentially vital significance for medical research.

We in JALSA believe that utilizing such embryos in therapeutic stem cell research, that is, research intended to save human life, is an appropriate ethical response to a difficult issue. Consistently with our general concerns in the areas of health care, we also believe that any such research must be subject to public scrutiny to make sure that it is being conducted for an appropriate purpose and that meaningful informed consent procedures be put in place. We also believe that government needs to assure that the results of such potentially life-saving research are available to all in society, based on the criterion of medical need, rather than ability to pay.

Fetal tissue clearly holds unique promise for medical research. In fact, fetal tissue research in the 1950s was vital to the medical research that led to the development of two life-saving vaccines: polio and rubella (German measles). Embryonic stem cell research provides hope for thousands of individuals suffering from disease. The accomplishments in the last few years are breathtaking. We believe that institutional safeguards and state regulation can successfully guarantee that the research will be limited to therapeutic treatments. This is not an invitation to the cloning of humans or other complex animals.

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