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
There is no doubt that human life begins at conception
Simply because the alternative is to accept some arbitrary standard for convenience's sake: the quickening, viability, when labor begins, when the crown of the baby's head appears.
Thus we must take full responsibility for protecting innocent human life, otherwise millions of babies will fall by the wayside, unmarked and abandoned, as they are now. There is no question that every woman of childbearing age must be asked to present herself for monthly testing of her status. When the state detects a new human being, that child's life must be protected and preserved, as a citizen and child of God.
To the present day, the debate has taken place as to what the moral course is after the mother gives visible indication of pregnancy. Those who believe that aborting that pregnancy is termination of a human life and thus murder have been content to accept the mother's account of whether she is pregnant, or the evidence of their own eyes.
Clearly this is insufficient. The new citizen of the state within is equally a baby whether the mother knows she is pregnant or not, or whether she chooses to inform the world or not. Our duty is clear: above all, protect the children. Now that we have the means to do so simply and economically, test every fertile woman every month. The cost will be more than offset by the productivity of the future citizens who will live rather than die, and more importantly we will know that we have done the only right, proper, and moral thing.
horse poop
Bush politicized the science of stem cell research, pandering to his base and setting us back years.
Obama is simply doing as he promised, separating science from the pull of partisan politics, freeing our researchers to search for lifesaving cures for suffering individuals -- by using byproducts from fertility treatments that would otherwise be simply discarded.
This move away from the politics of fear and misinformation is respectful of human dignity, and embraces the possibility of alleviating suffering of living, breathing human beings.
More Obama Unity
Interface, I understand your limited view of life and morality, but the Obama decision was not about science. It was about politicizing stem cell research, throwing stones at the Bush decision, and rewarding his base.
Obama's decision will promote a whole new industry of embryo creation and destruction, including the creation of human embryos by cloning for research in which they are destroyed. It forces American taxpayers, including those who see the deliberate taking of human life in the embryonic stage as profoundly unjust, to be complicit in this practice.
Lastly, Obama's claim about taking politics out of science is in the deepest sense antidemocratic. The question of whether to destroy human embryos for research purposes is not fundamentally a scientific question; it is a moral and civic question about the proper uses, ambitions and limits of science. It is a question about how we will treat members of the human family at the very dawn of life; about our willingness to seek alternative paths to medical progress that respect human dignity.
Anti-abortion activists are very sincere
in their belief that embryos are human beings and must be afforded the same kind of protection. Therefore, it behooves these activists to press for legislation which would mandate the preservation of all unused embryos in perpetuity. To do any less, would condone murder. Fertility clinics would undoubtedly return unused eggs to their original donors, rather than bear the expense, probably embedded in some device simllar to an ice cube, for ease of storage. They could then be brought out for special occasions such as family reunions and weddings. They might even be sent into outer space to populate some barren planet. Just think, maybe that's how earth was originally populated. The possibilities are endless, unless some myopic guest makes an error and puts one of those special ice cubes in a glass of lemonade. Would that be manslaughter?
seems like Kenny's
upset that Obama's delegating scientific decisions to, well, scientists.
Obama Pattern
Obama's decision on stem cell research is typical of his other decisions: It is a chance to overthrow a Bush Program thus throwing red meat to his supporters, but then he leaves the really important work to a bunch of unelected bureacrats who can then take the heat. This stem cell decision was not one of science, it was a moral decision on where to draw the line in stem cell research. On this he punted to the NIH. Think what you may about this decision and stem cell research, at least GWB went to the rouble of considering the issues and taking responsibility for deciding where to draw the line.
No surprise
That Babs and Sanchez are in favor of killing babies, that is their main purpose in life, supporting abortion.
Yea, Lezzle
The only life they value is their own.
And the slaughter of the innocents continues
Apop and Interface, aka Mengela and Adolf, are bound and determined to prove that there is nothing inherently wrong with human experimentation for the mass production of patented (money producing) genomic mutations.
The title should be: Obama promotes culture of death.
Everything Obama has done in this are makes me physically ill. That I am being forced to pay for it - even more so. I can also pretty much guarntee that this will allow a cloned embryo to be implanted and allowed to mature to birth, despite these people saying "it won't happen". It will, it's almost guarnteed with BO promoting cloning for the purpose of killing. Once you are promoting the death of unborn children I doubt you will stop there.