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TechnoratiOn Monday President Obama issued an executive order, removing the restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) instituted by former-President Bush. ESCR has provoked great controversy because it necessarily involves the destruction of nascent human life. Two alternative methods of stem cell research have seen great success and are free from ethical controversy, but Obama chose to ignore both ethics and pragmatism in his misguided commitment to support embryonic stem cell research with taxpayer money.
The controversy surrounding embryonic stem cell research has persisted for years. Ethical concerns over the destruction of embryos were so great that, in 1996, Congress passed the Dickey-Wicker amendment, preventing federal funds from being used in research that involved the production or destruction of human embryos. Former-President Bush later opened the door for the federal funding of research on embryonic stem cell lines which had already been derived from the privately-funded destruction of embryos prior to 2001. On Monday, Obama removed that date restriction, opening up the floodgates for billions of taxpayer dollars to be spent on any embryonic stem cell lines produced since 2001 and providing economic incentives for the destruction of more embryos.
President Obama paid no heed to a clear alternative to embryonic stem cell research which has arisen in the past two years. Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are adult cells (often derived from skin or hair) which are "induced" by scientists to regress to a state akin to embryonic stem cells. This approach has seen particularly great success in the past year, leading Rudolf Jaenisch, an expert in transgenic science, to explain that "biologically there's no difference" between iPSCs and Embryonic Stem Cells. In fact, iPSCs provide a work-around for the troublesome compatibility issues surrounding embryonic stem cells since they are derived from a patient's own cells.
This new approach is so promising that some of the most prominent researchers in the field have abandoned embryonic stem cell research to focus on iPSCs. Sir Ian Wilmut, the scientist who produced Dolly the Sheep, announced in 2007 that he was abandoning his previous research to focus on iPSCs. James Thompson, the University of Wisconsin scientist who developed the first embryonic stem cells, has shifted the focus of two of his companies to iPSCs. If two of the biggest names in stem cell research chose to abandon embryonic stem cells for iPSCs, you would think everyone would take note. Instead, Democrats and "the scientific community" continue to insist that embryonic stem cells are crucial to a healthy future.
Despite the scientific community's many promises of stem cell based cures, embryonic stem cell research has yet to provide one widely-available treatment after many years of research. In fact, the one well-known case of embryonic stem cell "therapy" involves a young boy in Israel who was injected with embryonic stem cells in an attempt to heal him from a fatal neuromuscular disease. Within four years, the doctors discovered tumors in his brain and spinal cord produced by the stem cells he had received. Despite this ghoulish result, the Food and Drug Administration recently approved the first limited clinical testing of an ESCR-based treatment in the United States.
If the President was truly concerned about effective cures and therapy, he would send massive funding towards another promising technology: adult stem cell research. Unlike iPSCs, adult stem cells are not returned to an "embryonic" state—rather, they are taken directly from a patient or donor (often from their bone marrow or umbilical cord blood) and injected into the diseased part of their body. This form of therapy has yielded huge success in recent years. Continue »
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