President Obama advanced the causes of medical research and good sense on Monday.
He reversed President Bush’s illogical executive order that limited federal funding for embryonic stem cell research to just a few cell lines.
Bush’s order held back research that scientists believe will lead to a better understanding of diseases — and eventually to treatments and cures.
Bush said the government should not pay for research that involves the destruction of human embryos.
But the embryos in question are the products of fertility procedures. If not used for those procedures, they are either frozen indefinitely or destroyed.
Jim and Virginia Stowers, founders of Kansas City’s Stowers Institute for Medical Research, witnessed Obama’s signing of his executive order in the White House on Monday. The invitation to them was a fitting tribute to their commitment to seeking cures.
Researchers at the institute primarily use endowment monies, not federal grants. But because researchers build upon one another’s work, Stowers’ scientists will benefit from the increased opportunities created by Obama’s order.
Even after Monday’s positive developments, more work is needed to remove barriers to medical research.
Because of a 1996 law, scientists still can’t use federal funds to initiate a line of cells from an embryo created in a fertility clinic. They must work with lines created by private companies or other governments. That’s a serious impediment.
Researchers are barred by the same law from using federal money to create embryos through a laboratory procedure called somatic cell nuclear transfer.
Those restrictions will continue to hinder scientists in their quest for discoveries.
The 1996 law was an overreaction to the threat of human cloning. The creation of a human baby through cloning should assuredly be banned. But the law should be rewritten so it doesn’t encumber meaningful medical research.
Even as researchers in Missouri applauded Obama’s action, they worried about efforts by some groups and legislators to overturn a state constitutional amendment which says that all scientific research that is legal under federal law should also be legal in Missouri.
Without that protection, the state and its research institutions would miss out on opportunities that will be made available by a more supportive administration in Washington. Sensible politicians and citizens must make sure that doesn’t happen.
Delicious
Digg
The master of the no-brainer
Interface, when it comes to "no-brainer", you are the master, without a doubt.
If your concern is the alleviation of human suffering, why not stop posting?
Now be sure to do what you typically do--hurl and insult, name-call--anything that can look like it takes the place of a genuine thought.
Sputtering
The difficulty lies not in complex higher ordered composition but in your limited comprehension.
Lezzle, let me be the first to point out..
...that you're now babbling incoherently. Please come back when you're capable of forming complete thoughts and after you've wiped the spittle from your chin.
Human Capital
Come on, mengele, eichmann, and adolf, the obvious motivation is profit, yet you liberals who wage war on corporations, including health care institutions, insurance agencies, and pharmaceutical manufacturers, look the other way when potentially, truly "obscene" profits by companies are the clear motives behind Obama's eagerness to grant Federal permission to his loyal Democrat friends for their "research".
sorry
but your post was nonsense, though I'm sure you know that.
Interface
Your book is the "book of death". Why is it that liberals are all about "death" until it comes to capital punishment? Then you claim that person has a right to life?
perhaps a more useful distinction
would be in terms of each of their personhood, since I'm assuming that each is in fact genetically human.
A baby's definitely a person. An embryo's a clump of cells that has the potential to be a person, under the absolutely right conditions, but no, it's not a person.
As the National Institute of Health describes it:
"Embryonic stem cells, as their name suggests, are derived from embryos. Specifically, embryonic stem cells are derived from embryos that develop from eggs that have been fertilized in vitro—in an in vitro fertilization clinic—and then donated for research purposes with informed consent of the donors. They are not derived from eggs fertilized in a woman's body. The embryos from which human embryonic stem cells are derived are typically four or five days old and are a hollow microscopic ball of cells called the blastocyst. The blastocyst includes three structures: the trophoblast, which is the layer of cells that surrounds the blastocyst; the blastocoel, which is the hollow cavity inside the blastocyst; and the inner cell mass, which is a group of approximately 30 cells at one end of the blastocoel."
http://stemcells.nih.gov/info/basics/basics3.asp
Sorry, but a blastocyst in a lab dish simply ain't a person, and if cells harvested from that clump of cells may save the life of an actual person, this is an ethical no-brainer in my book.
Exactly
Joseph Mengele was a physician (not an experimental scientist) operating entirely at the behest of politicians. That's what letting politicians run the show in science gets you.
And once you find a useful distinction between a spermatazoon, an ovum, a zygote, a blastocyst, an embryo, and a cute little cuddly baby in terms of each of their humanness, blease advise.
Edith - wasn't Mengela a scientist too?
And SPERMATAZOA - are they a living being without the ovum?
And the scientists I know
Detest being overseen by politicians and self-styled bioethicists.
Aren't blind, unprovable assertions fun and useful?
AND WHAT ABOUT THE SPERMATAZOA, LEZZLE? DYING BY THE BILLIONS UNMOURNED, LIVING, SENSITIVE CREATURES, RESPONSIVE TO HEAT AND COLD, EACH A POTENTIAL NOBEL PRIZE WINNER--THE HORRIFYING HOLOCAUST GOES ON AND ON AND ON.
Jeez.