Backwards
Posted by Rebecca Teti in News on Monday, March 09, 2009 6:38 PM
This morning the President rescinded President Bush’s ban on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research.
What has gone un-reported is that President Obama’s new executive order undid not one, but two, Bush policies.
He not only lifted the ban on taxpayer funding of embryo-destructive research, he also rescinded the executive order funding ethically acceptable alternatives (see the final sentence of this morning’s executive order).
So, in the name of advancing science, the President has just de-funded the most promising field of research in medicine.
The most advanced technique in the field is cell re-programming, which allows researchers to have all the flexible attributes of stem cells without destroying human lives. Only a week ago, the Washington Post reported that embryonic stem cell research was being eclipsed by alternative methods.
And that wasn’t even the first time the Post reported that ESCR was no longer necessary.
As Faith & Family Live! readers know, the father of stem cell research recently abandoned working with embryonic stem cells because it’s simply not as promising as ethically acceptable stem cell research.
While embryonic stem cell research has yet to deliver on a single promise in spite of having been pursued vigorously in the private sector, here are just a handful of the exciting actual treatments coming from ethical sources.
Adult stem cells have been used to:
*Grow and implant new bladders from patients’ own cells.
*Relieve diabetics of insulin dependence.
* Given an advanced Parkinson’s patient a four-year reprieve from symptoms.
* They’re also being used to fight brain cancer.
*They’ve been used to grow new heart tissue.
*And grow new bone.
* They’ve helped a paraplegic to walk again (with braces).
Umbilical cord stem cells have been used to:Regrow spinal cord tissue, restoring feeling and movement in a person with an old injury.
In fact, ethically-obtained stem cells are now treating 65 actual human ailments. Embryonic stem cells? Not one. And it’s not because of lack of funding. It’s because they reproduce too rapidly and so far their growth can’t be controlled.
If you have a serious illness or love someone who does, wouldn’t you rather fund the research that’s actually producing cures?
Forgive me, but to me it looks as if President Obama accomplished the Orwellian opposite of his stated intention: he ordered the slowing of scientific progress for what appear to be purely political reasons.
Update: Princeton’s Robbie George agrees with me in the WSJ.
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