Threads by GonzoII, Salvation and me.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Obama signed an executive order Monday repealing a Bush-era policy that limited federal tax dollars for embryonic stem cell research.
Obama's move overturns an order signed by President Bush in 2001 that barred the National Institutes of Health from funding research on embryonic stem cells beyond using 60 cell lines that existed at that time. . .
Salem, OR - March 9, 2009 - “President Obama’s decision to lift the ban on using taxpayer dollars for embryonic stem cell research is deadly for human lives and completely unnecessary”, said Gayle Atteberry, Executive Director of Oregon Right to Life.
“Ten years of research with embryonic stem cells has produced nothing but failure after failure, while research with adult stem cells and reprogrammed cells is finding cures and clinical successes on a regular basis,” Ms. Atteberry continued. . .
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- President Barack Obama may win applause from some in the scientific community for his expected decision on Monday to overturn President Bush's limits on embryonic stem cell research funding. But some scientists say the controversial research is no longer the hot prospect for patients.
Bernadine Healy, the former head of the National institutes of Health and the American Red Cross says the remarkable advances of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) are beginning to subsume embryonic stem cells.
She wrote in U.S News and World Report that IPSC and adult stem cell research successes have "diminished" the prospect that ESCR is the future of regenerative medicine.
"Even for strong backers of embryonic stem cell research, [Obama's decision] is no longer as self-evident as it was, because there is markedly diminished need for expanding these cell lines for either patient therapy or basic research," Healy explains. . .
Thread by me.
March 9, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Many Democrats are wise enough to have a healthy fear of FOCA, the Freedom of Choice Act. Those on the religious left who support President Barack Obama are particularly sensitive to the symbolic power of FOCA to undercut their messaging about "abortion reduction." If FOCA were to cause much-beloved Catholic hospitals to begin shutting their doors, the political impact would be devastating.
Thus, it came as no surprise several weeks ago when some of Obama's religious supporters began accusing pro-lifers -- particularly Catholics -- of using FOCA as a scare tactic when it had not yet been introduced into the 111th Congress.
Amy Sullivan, an editor at TIME, wrote an article titled, "The Catholic Attack on a Mythical Abortion Bill," singling out the U.S. Catholic bishops for their national postcard campaign against FOCA. Catholics United was predictably quoted in the story, as they are now in every media story giving pro-abortion Catholics political cover: "These right-wing organizations are deliberately misleading people in order to stoke the culture war."
Sullivan, who wrote a good book about the "God gap" in the Democratic Party, went way out on a limb to defuse FOCA anxiety. "Congress," she wrote, "isn't about to pass the Freedom of Choice Act -- because no such bill has been introduced in the current Congress." True, but as Sullivan surely knows, there are several members of Congress who are itching to reintroduce FOCA, regardless of any misgivings Democratic strategists may have about its consequences in the 2010 election.
For the abortion lobby, the passage of FOCA is the holy grail of their activism, and the just desserts for their strenuous -- and expensive -- efforts on behalf of Obama.
FOCA, as it turns out, is going to be reintroduced in the not-so-distant future. On March 6, a spokesman for Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, told the St. Louis Post Dispatch that FOCA "is among the congressman's priorities. We expect to reintroduce it sooner rather than later."
Ilan Kayatksy, the spokesman, added that Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) would introduce the same bill in the Senate "with some minor tweaks." (Representative Nadler introduced FOCA in the 108th and 110th sessions of Congress.) . . .