Appendix G. 
239 
debates about human embryo research generally. In fact, it is worth 
noting that the report of the NIH Human Embryo Research Panel 
(HERP), published in 1994, explicitly identified the isolation of human 
embryonic stem cells as one of thirteen areas of research with 
preimplantation embryos that might yield significant scientific 
benefit and that should be considered for federal funding (See NIH 
HERP, 1994, ch. 2). 
Although the recommendations of the HERP were never 
implemented, the fact that a high-profile panel reviewed ex utero 
preimplantation human embryo research and explicitly endorsed 
stem cell research, meant that the panel report would affect the 
policy debate about stem cell research, even though its 
recommendation that the derivation and use of stem cells be 
federally funded was not adopted. For one thing, the panel's 
anticipatory support for stem cell research assured that when human 
stem cells were actually derived several years later, the debate that 
ensued would be tied to the abortion controversy. As members of 
the HERP panel have made clear, from the start, the work of the 
panel was embroiled in controversy. For example, shortly after the 
HERP was impaneled, thirty-two members of Congress wrote to 
Harold Varmus, the director of NIH, to complain about the 
composition of the panel. A lawsuit was filed in an attempt to 
prevent the panel from meeting, and members of the panel received 
threatening letters and phone calls (Green, 1994; Tauer, 1995; Hall, 
2003). 
Given the pro-life opposition to the HERP panel and its 
recommendations, it is no real surprise that initial reactions to the 
prospect of human stem cell research fell out along the fault lines of 
abortion politics in the country. By and large, individuals and groups 
opposed to abortion tended to be opposed to stem cell research, and 
individuals and groups supportive of legalized abortion tended to 
support stem cell research.^ For example, the testimony that Richard 
Doerflinger, the principal spokesperson for the U.S. Catholic bishops 
on pro-life matters, offered before the Senate Appropriation 
Subcommittee on Labor, Health, and Education in 1998 was 
substantially the same as that he offered before the HERP in 1994 on 
stem cell research (Doerflinger, 1998, 1994). In both cases, the 
fundamental issue was the status of the embryo. Given Catholic 
teaching that the embryo must be treated as a person from 
conception, no experimentation on the embryo can be allowed that 
would not also be allowed on infants or children. Hence, the Catholic 
church treats stem cell research as it has treated previous issues 
involving the destruction of human embryos; it is condemned as 
morally abhorrent. 
PRE -PUBLICATION VERSION 
