PERSPECTIVE: Comment period open on stem cell guidelines
- May 5, 2009 - 2
One of President Barack Obama’s most newsworthy acts during his first 100 days in the White House also stands among his most disturbing within the pro-life community: the reversal of his predecessor’s policy limiting federal funding of embryo-destructive research. Now the new administration is moving quickly to establish the fine points of the new policy, and public comment is welcomed.
To provide your feedback on the draft guidelines, please visit NIH’s comment form, where you can submit a response. The comment period ends May 26.
At the direction of the president, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) rolled out its draft guidelines on April 24. The policy would allow taxpayer dollars to fund research on “leftover” embryos from in vitro fertilization so long as the parents provide consent. This contrasts sharply with former President George W. Bush’s policy, which staked a more ethical position allowing research only on embryonic stem cell lines already in existence on August 9, 2001, the date of his policy.
The government may have broached a new threshold on scientific research and respect for life. Are some lives more valuable than others? Is it permissible, even noble, to sacrifice smaller, less developed lives who have no voice based on the highly speculative promise of helping bigger, more developed lives?
Respect for the sanctity of every human life begs a different response. It is always unconscionable to choose science at the expense of innocent life. The existing science even shouts the prudent answer: non-destructive, adult stem cell research. Using stem cells from sources such as fat, bone marrow, and umbilical cord blood, more than 70 ailments have already been treated. The number of treatments using research that requires the killing of human embryos still stands at zero. What’s more, a recent breakthrough enables researchers to revert adult skin cells back to an embryonic-like state, a technique that many scientists believe could make destructive research unnecessary.
And we need not discard frozen embryos left over at fertility clinics. We should find them homes, like the hundreds, and by some reports thousands, of adoptive couples who have given life to those who are lovingly called “snowflake babies.”
Countless unborn lives, embryonic in form but fully human in substance, hang in the balance. We ought to do all we can to protect them and to pursue truly “ethically responsible” research, as the NIH claims to support.
To provide your feedback on the draft guidelines, please visit NIH’s comment form, where you can submit a response. The comment period ends May 26.
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1 On May 6th, 2009, at 6:09am, Tim Smithpeters wrote:
The Father in Heaven says in His word (The Holy Bible) that murder is sin. Abortion is murder just same as killing someone with any other kind of weapon. Man needs
to stay out of my Lord’s business.
2 On May 6th, 2009, at 3:03pm, Virgie Metts wrote:
Mr. Land,
thank you for the article on stem cell research. I believe former Pres. Bush got it right when he restricted it to present cells.
It is too bad that our liberal president came along and changed that. It was like he couldn’t wait to get sworn in so he could do just that.
I shudder to think about the road this will probably lead this nation down in picking and choosing lives to live or die, as casual as we buy a pair of shoes.
thanks
Virgie