Thursday, June 07, 2007

Democrats try to push embryonic stem cell research

Once again, the Democrats are trying to push embryonic stem cell research through, despite that embryonic stem cells are yet to work. ANYWHERE. Before I continue, let me ask this: Is the Catholic Church opposed to stem cell research? If you answered 'yes', you'd be wrong. The CC is not opposed to stem cell research, just *embryonic* stem cell research. I'm only mentioning this because most news articles that mention stem cell research and the CC's opposition to it almost without fail do not make this important distinction. Almost always, the message that is conveyed in the article is that the "CC is opposed to progress."

So I ask, and I know I've asked this before, why isn't more money put in the non-controversial - and workable! - adult stem cells and stem cells obtained from umbilical cords? The usual line is that such stem cells aren't as flexible as embryonic stem cells. Well guess what, folks? The flexibility of embryonic stem cells is still *theoretical*, because they haven't proven to work! So what embryonic stem cell researchers are actually comparing are ghost statistics. And yet, these con men are able to push their ghost statistics onto our lawmakers so that they keep trying to pass funding for this ghost research. And as with any con game, someone out there is making a ton of money.

Thing is, adult and other non-controversial stem cells work NOW. No, they don't match the "success" rate of the still-theoretical flexibility of embryonic stem cells, but with more research, they might get very close. Already there's promise that such stem cells might help in battling diabetes. Not only that, embryonic stem cells may not ever live up to the "hype". Right now, such stem cells have shown to be more successful to causing cancer rather than cures, so this means that it might be years - even decades (if ever!) - before embryonic stem cells provide more cures than cancers, much less becoming the miracle cure that it's been hyped up to be.

In the meantime, the non-controversial stem cells could be having all that success in cures, and that day could come faster if the people in positions of influence would stop listening to the honeyed words of con artists and invest their money in that research instead. The best thing we can do is let our representatives know our preferences in the type of research that we want our tax money to be going to. It's time to stop listening to con artists, and invest our money elsewhere.

I say that we let embryonic stem cell researchers try to get their research money from private sources and see what kind of success they have. If private investors aren't willing to invest in this type of research, why should our tax money go to it?

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