Word: stillmans
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...part, the relatively calm, reaction may be a reflection of the pervasiveness of the scientific mindset. Robert J. Stillman, director of the program under which the experiment took place, was quoted in Newsweek as saying he wondered why "people have not been able to separate the what if from what we actually did." Behind Stillman's statement is a faith that pure science can, in fact, be distinguished from its application. Perhaps because scientists are used to working with abstractions, they are able to draw a fairly definite line between theory and practice...
...easy to demonize the unknown, and scientists like Stillman suffer the consequences. He and his team had no desire to mass-produce babies; they were simply extending their research in the field of in-vitro fertilization, using every means at their disposal to help couples who are unable to have children. Yet they found themselves condemned on all sides. Japanese doctors called their experiment "unthinkable," and the Vatican accused them of opening the door to "a tunnel of madness...
...what about the customers of these scientists? The boom in in-vitro fertilization has only occurred because some couples will go to any lengths to conceive a child. If would-be parents stopped at natural barriers, Stillman and his team probably never would have split embryos in the first place--it certainly would not have made the cover of Time...
...Hall and Stillman discovered this, to their dismay, in the glare of publicity. At an impromptu press conference the evening the story broke, and in subsequent appearances on Nightline, Good Morning America and Larry King Live, the bewildered scientists tried to keep the discussion focused on the facts of their experiment: that the embryos were defective, that they were never implanted, and that they could never have grown into living humans. Instead they had to field questions from callers like the one who wondered if their technique could be used to put a lion's head on a horse...
Having set the terms of the debate -- which focused not on what had actually happened but on the frightening scenarios that could arise sometime in the future -- the ethicists clearly carried the day. Hall and Stillman retreated to the last refuge of the research scientist. "We have set out to provide some basic information," said an exasperated Hall on Larry King. "It's up to the ethicists and the medical community, with input from the general public, to decide what kind of guidelines will lead us in the future...