Posted on 10/24/2004 10:07:50 PM PDT by Former Military Chick
William Saletan wrote in the online magazine Slate last August that stem-cell research had become something like a religion to the Democrats, and that was before John Edwards' incredible words the other day.
The vice presidential nominee told us that if elected president, John Kerry would enable the lame to walk. It was as if he were talking about Kerry having supernatural powers.
"Christopher Reeve just passed away, and America just lost a great champion for this cause, somebody who was a powerful voice for the need to do stem-cell research and change the lives of people like him, who have gone through a tragedy," said Edwards.
"Well, if we can do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again."
Then come the lies he and Kerry have told on the subject and keep telling, the overkill, the use of the phrase "stem cell" as a kind of religious beckoning unrelated to anything science has to say.
Saletan made that point after the Democratic National Convention, noting that the phrase was used more often in that gathering than the words "unemployment" and "abortion" added together.
He observed, too, that the distortions about stem-cell research are a consequence of the stem-cell lobbyists, including biotech companies, coming together to exaggerate the issue and mislead the public.
What are the distortions?
Edwards told one when he suggested cures could be forthcoming in a few years. Where is there a scientist in the field saying as much? Scientists do describe the research as "promising," but seem to agree that it could be a decade or more before anything significant is accomplished, if indeed it ever is.
Bill Frist of Tennessee, the Republican majority leader of the Senate and himself a physician, said Edwards was cruelly "giving false hope to people."
Kerry and Edwards say the research could lead to cures for Alzheimer's. Scientists tell us that is highly unlikely.
Kerry and Edwards talk about Bush banning research on stem-cell research. Not true, as Saletan said. There is no ban on private research of embryonic stem cells and no ban or limits on publicly funded adult stem-cell research ($200 million has been spent, Saletan reports). Michael Fumento of the Hudson Institute has provided reams of evidence that adult stem-cell research is already producing results.
Bush has not even banned publicly funded research of embryonic stem cells. He is the first president to provide funds for this research, although it is true he has placed limits on it. And it is true federal funding does drive most medical research in this country.
Still, there is such a thing as privately funded research, and as others have noted, private enterprise would probably be spending much more than now if investors were as taken by the stem-cell hype as Kerry and Edwards. As it is, institutions such as Harvard and Stanford are putting up private money for embryonic research.
Enough about lies. Let's talk about simple-mindedness.
There is an ethical issue here. Embryonic stem-cell research involves killing embryos. You take life to maybe help find cures for the living. In the research Bush has allowed, the embryos from which the stem-cell lines were taken are already dead; nothing has to be killed.
We are at a divide in medical history when such questions are likely to become common. Might not we opt for at least some hesitancy of the kind Bush has prescribed - some truly serious limits on federally funded embryonic stem cell research, but no ban?
I can respect those who answer carefully that the Bush limits should go, but not someone like Edwards, who will next be telling us that if we just put him and Kerry in the White House, they will raise the dead to life.
Jay Ambrose is director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard Newspapers.
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Pro-life/pro-baby ping...
Ditto FM Chick. Excellent article. Factual, concise, and informative. Let the editor of the Joplin, MO Globe know we appreciate real journalism. letters@joplinglobe.com
Consider also this excellent post by Charles Krauthammer, himself confined to a wheelchair for decades:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/charleskrauthammer/ck20041015.shtml
Just wanted to thank both of you for adding the links to the thread. I so agree we need to let those who print the truth, that we appreciate what they are doing. Some might have an ego, but, what the heck.
As for Charles, he is by far one of my favorite guests on Humes show. I had just recently learned he was in a wheel chair. But one would never know it and he doesn't push it in your face. Although many would say, if you are trying to get funds to find a cure you need to be pushy. I try and take that into consideration.
A moral dilemma that the embryo-research fanatics never consider is this:
1. True, if we pour enough billions into creating and killing enough embryos to harvest their stem cells, we might (possibly) find a cure for some terrible ailment (e.g., blindness). Granted.
2. If we don't kill those embryos, but intstead let them develop into adult human beings, we might (possibly) have another Lincoln or Einstein. Granted.
Dilemma: Is it better to have a possible cure for blindness, or a possible Einstein? On what basis do you make such a decision?
It's also true that there is rarely only ONE way of arriving at a desired result in science. No one, to my knowledge, has ever claimed that a promising line of research with embryos cannot also be achieved (in slightly different fashion) by the use of placental or adult cells.
I’m sorry Mister Kerry but I refuse to feel guilty about my position on embryonic stem cell research.
People like John Kerry and Michael J. Fox like to frame the stem cell debate in such a manner that we either agree with them or be labeled closed-minded religious fanatics who are against finding cures. This is simply not true.
The truth is that many of us feel that adult stem cell research will provide the same cures without putting us on any of the slippery slopes involved with using embryonic stem cells.
I find it troubling that these people never talk about the fact that our bodies reject embryonic stem cells in the same manner they reject a transplanted heart or lung. Personally, I believe they don't speak about this side of the science because it tends to prove that another person (albeit an embryonic one) was destroyed in the process.
Advocates of this research also never tell us that they intend to get around this rejection problem by combining the patient’s tissue with the farmed stem cells to create clones who’s DNA will match the patient’s DNA. Of course, the problem here is that, not only will human embryos be destroyed; the clones will also be created and destroyed.
When confronted with these facts, the stem cell lobby tells us that it’s okay to destroy these embryos because they’re only allowed to develop to a microscopic blob of cells. However, I especially don’t buy into this argument because it argues that it’s okay to destroy them simply because they don’t look like us yet.
Indeed, the only real advantage to using embryonic stem cells seems to be that it is a way to supply the scientists with a never-ending supply of embryos for their experiments. However, if growing new people for the purpose of using them as spare parts for other people does not go against everything America has ever stood for, I simply do not know what does.
On the other hand, none of this is true for cures derived from a person’s very own adult stem cells. And, since all the cures found to date have been the result of using only these adult stem cells, I think it is not only a more ethical choice but also a much wiser choice to direct federal stem cell funding towards adult stem cell research and away from embryonic stem cell research.
Let the private sector and other countries diddle with these embryos if they so choose but please direct my federal tax dollars towards the one branch of the science that has been proven effective without placing us on any of the ethical slippery slopes that surround dehumanizing the human embryo because if you give them an inch, they will take a mile.
If someone had told me thirty years ago that one day there would be a bloc of voters in this country who not only felt it was okay to destroy a human child while it was being born but also strongly advocated for the right to do just that, I would have thought them crazy. But here we are actually living in that world today.
I have little doubt that, once we start down the slippery slope of using human embryos for medicine, we will regret what we find at the bottom of that slope.
I also have little doubt that, if embryonic stem cells were the magic bullet they are billed to be, they would have provided us with at least one cure by now but they haven’t.
Embryonic Stem Cells are touted as a cure-all because they can be “coaxed” into becoming any kind of other specific cell but this is extremely hard to do in a test tube and, after all these decades, scientists worldwide have yet to actually make it work.
However, (beware the slippery slope) these same scientists know that, once the public accepts using human embryos for research, the next step is to simply let nature take its course and allow the cloned embryos to grow the desired type of cells on their own and then harvest those cells (a heart a lung etc.) instead.
As an American, I feel very strongly that, once we create a life, the only person who has a right to decide what is done with that life is the person who is actually living that life. And, that we have a responsibility to insure our tax dollars are spent wisely when it comes to healing the sick. I could not feel more strongly that squandering this money on the “promise” of “maybe someday” finding a cure by growing a class of people who will literally be used as spare parts for other people is the absolute wrong direction.
Adult stem cell research is also still in its infancy but it has already provided us with dozens of cures without any of the ethical baggage surrounding embryonic stem cell research and, to me, it just seems like the wisest place to invest these federal tax dollars.
Finally, one more thing, I can’t help but take exception when people like John Kerry try to dupe us into voting for him by preying on our very personal desire to help the sick and then tells us only one side of the story.
Peace.
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