During the campaign last year, I found it objectionable that one political party supported distorted messages suggesting that evil opponents of stem cell research were denying people with all manner of disease and injury hope for a cure. What they conveniently didn't mention was that the only thing being opposed was tax money spent on embryonic stem cell research, which by the way requires destruction of a human embryo. Nobody's stopping privately funded research in this area.
As I do with many controversial issues, I checked it out and discovered that stem cells are indeed proving valuable in many cases. But not embryonic stem cells. The truth is that adult and placental stem cells are widely and successfully used, and new applications are being developed all the time. But embryonic stem cells haven't yet proven therapeutic for any disease. They just can't get them to work.
I tried to give the benefit of the doubt to the very vocal proponents of selective taxpayer funding of embryonic stem cells, thinking that maybe they were being duped by researchers in search of grant money. Or, like Michael J. Fox, they simply held out hope for a cure from any source for their own debilitating disease, even on the barest sliver of probability for success.
But now I'm more fully inclined to believe that the whole issue was manufactured. First of all, the announcement this week of the discovery that stem cells taken from amniotic fluid have all the properties of embryonic stem cells without the problems that researchers haven't yet been able to overcome.
Problem solved, right? You can now harvest stem cells that are better than embryonic without destroying a human embryo. So we can all celebrate and move forward!
I guess not. The Dems have told us to ignore that news, it's full speed ahead on their big bill to throw millions of dollars into embronic stem cell research. In other words, facts and science don't matter, and people with moral objection to such human experimentation certainly don't matter either.
Why? I think at least two reasons: First is money. Democrats have been given huge campaign contributions from those who champion this issue for their own reasons. Second is the reason isn't actually the reason. It's not about finding cures, but creating justification for abortion. See, with embryonic stem cell research funded by the government, women can say, "I'm not ready to be a mother just now, so I gave my embryo to science to help develop a cure for (insert disease here)."
What other explanation is there?
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