Thank you Gretchen and others for your kind and encouraging words. Our son Trey and the entire Embryo Adoption experience is a gift from God to us. We have another snowflake baby due in February. Below is a letter to the editor I submitted after reading Jonathen Alter's recent Newsweek article regarding the veto. Hope you enjoy.
Please consider my response to the Jonathan Alter article below.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13989890/site/newsweek/
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/07/images/20060719-3_p071906kh-0222-515h.html
My son, Trey Jones, is pictured above and we and other Snowflake families participate in the press conference with President Bush July 19, 1006 so I am not unbiased on the issue of taxpayer funded Embryonic Stem Cell Research (ESCR). Let me first say that I and others that believe as I do are not uncaring about those who are suffering life-threatening illness and disease. That being said, I emphatically disagree with providing a taxpayer-funded incentive for the destruction of embryos. President Bush did not stop what Mr. Alter deems as pathbreaking research, he simply said in his veto that taxpayers would not provide an incentive for the destruction of embryos. I disagree as well with what you about the political ramification of taxpayer funded ESCR even though it wouldn't matter to me if it were politically unpopular. I say this because the public has never really been asked the full question that states that this research requires that the embryo be destroyed and at the expense of the taxpayer. The 70% support of ESCR that the media often mentions is based on an incomplete question of the issue of taxpayer funded ESCR.
My apologies to Mr. Alter and others that we dared introduce at the press conference the so called 'leftovers' that Mr. Alter and those that share his view want to destroy at the expense of the taxpayer. The numbers you use to state their are 128 babies resulting from embryo adoption and 400,000 surplus embryos is completely misleading. The real numbers that are never mentioned in this debate are that less than 3% of these embryos are donated to research. The only conclusion mathematically that you can reach is that families that created these embryos don't know what to do with them. We completely believe that with more awareness about Embryo Adoption that more will want them to be used for what they were originally created for in the first place - having children. Your statement that couples overwhelmingly prefer to donate their surplus embryos to science is absolutely FALSE. Less than 3% donate to research and about 2% either choose the adoption or donation. The only number you can use in this whole debate is that overwhelmingly couples DO NOT donate their embryos to science.
By the way, the "Anti-cure" activists as Mr. Alter refers to me and others who share my belief is simply a cheap shot meant to marginalize someone with whom Mr. Alter disagrees. I guess the argument goes this way, when lacking a substantive argument just smear those with whom you disagree. Mr. Alter ends his article belittling the life of what he calls a protoplasm that is insignificant because it's size is small. Small and genetically complete and oh, by the way is the way Mr. Alter began his life.
Thank you for considering my thoughts on this article.
JJ Jones
Houston, TX