Posted on 11/24/2007 6:56:40 PM PST by Graybeard58
Advocates of publicly funded embryonic-stem-cell research long have built their case as a choice between sickness and health; life or death. Opposing such research on any grounds �” moral, financial, practical �” was depicted as heartless.
Everything changed in a heartbeat when teams of scientists in Japan and Wisconsin revealed they can replicate embryonic stem cells �” blank slates potentially amenable to transformation into revolutionary cures �” without creating and then killing human embryos. The researchers used adult skin cells.
To date, adult stem-cell research has produced about 70 treatments while embryonic research has yet to produce even one treatment, or even a human trial. This week's announcement is a major breakthrough because it opens the gates to the vaunted potential of embryonic cells in a manner a Harvard researcher described as "ethically uncomplicated."
Not everyone is happy. Scientists involved in embryonic-stem-cell research and their advocates in the political world find themselves in the same straits as the fellow who designed a better horse-manure shovel just as Henry Ford was preparing to build cars on an assembly line. Time may have passed these researchers by.
But there's still a lot at stake �” a lot of money, that is. Connecticut, California and other states have devoted billions to embryonic-stem-cell research, in part to thumb their noses at the Bush administration for refusing to fund it on moral grounds. Such expenditures typically are preceded by extravagant lies, the biggest one being that the federal government hinders the research.
Indeed, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., an advocate of embryonic-stem-cell research, said, "My own view is that science ought to be unfettered and that every possible alternative ought to be explored." But the science is unfettered.
Any research laboratory, university or pharmaceutical company can engage in embryonic stem-cell research without running afoul of federal authorities.
This was never about enabling the late Christopher Reeve to walk again or setting Michael J. Fox free of his Parkinson's disease. It wasn't even about cash transfers from the U.S. Treasury to Big Pharm. Rather, it was about wresting money from unwilling taxpayers for big new university buildings and research grants for professors who would rather tinker in the lab than teach freshmen basic biology or chemistry.
In the two days before Thanksgiving, science gave Americans reason to give thanks. This epochal breakthrough proves once again that human ingenuity can confront an either-or proposition and find a benign third way.
Ping to a Republican-American Editorial.
If you want on or off this list, let me know.
Do the tax payers in certain states get a refund?
Didn’t think so.
Bump!
It was just another stanza in the Big Lie.
“Killing Embryos is Unnecessary”
Medically, it is unnecessary.
Spiritually (for the pro-Death side), it IS necessary.
Charles Krauthammer (who’s an MD) was on the Special Report panel on Thursday discussing this with Brit Hume (or maybe it was Brett Baier).
He called this “one of the most significant medical breakthroughs of the last 50 years”. He described the incredibly complex procedure by which embryonic stem cell tissue was harvested in the past: extracting the egg, fertilizing the egg, extracting the stem cell, etc. He then made the point that, not only is this new method more ethical, it’s a lot cheaper and a lot less complicated than the older, more ethically-challenged way.
It was also pointed out that NIH provided a lot of the funding for this. One of the reasons that they got funding from NIH was that, since the Federal moratorium on funding new embryonic stem cell lines, NIH was looking for research to fund that did not involve more harvesting of embryonic stem cells.
In other words, if President Bush had not imposed the moratorium on funding new embryonic stem cells, this new and cheaper alternative would never have developed.
Not only is killing embryos unnecessary, it’s also obsolete.
BUMP!
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