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President
Bush Vetoes Embryonic Stem Cell Bill
Critics Unconscionably Say
Hope Gone For Sufferers. Oblivious To Non-Embryonic
Successes. Policy Is Good For Ethics, Science and
Sufferers.
On June
20th, President Bush again vetoed legislation that would
overturn his embryonic stem cell research policy. The
President has the votes to sustain a veto. Senator John
Ensign is the only Nevada Representative to support the
president's policy.
Critics
of the President's veto in Nevada say that this removes
hope for sufferers. These critics cannot be taken
seriously. In an
article in the Reno Gazette Journal,
Bob Fulkerson of the
Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada said
President Bush, "with the stroke of a pen, struck away the
hopes and dreams" of cures for chronic illnesses. “It's a
shame (Bush) is kow-towing to a very small group instead
of doing what's best for the American people suffering
from chronic ailments.” Mylan Hawkins, executive
director of the Nevada Diabetes Association said, “We
are deeply saddened that once again the hope for so many
Americans who suffer with incurable conditions has been
shattered.” Molly Dillon of the Nevada Juvenile
Diabetes Research says “this has nothing to do with
cloning…. This is about fertilized eggs from fertility
clinics that would otherwise be thrown away as medical
waste. It's not a right-to-life issue, it's a
right-to-quality-of-life issue." Planned Parenthood's
Allison Gauldin said that thinking that adult stem cells
are superior is naive.
It is
obvious to anyone with a little knowledge about the
research that embryonic stem cell research is not the only
hope-if it has any hope at all. There is plenty of
hope beyond embryonic stem cell research and embryonic
stem cell research appears to show NO hope at all. When
the president announced his veto a
woman who had her bladder replaced with one made from
her own stem cells was standing with the president. This
month we learned that diabetic participants in a
Brazilian study went off of insulin for long periods
of time after being treated with their own stem cells.
Another woman Carol Franz; of Las Vegas was also with the
president. She has beaten cancer twice by using her own
adult stem cells.
And
that is just the tip of the ice berg. You would think
that people speaking for sufferers and working for relief
and cures for their ailments would know that
there
are over 70 benefits for human sufferers through non
embryonic and adult stem cells. There are well over 1000
human trials. There are no human embryonic stem cell
benefits or trials.
There is also hope beyond
stem cell research. Two stories have appeared in the last
few days that have nothing to do with any kind of stem
cell research. One concerns an experimental
Parkinson’s trial using gene therapy. The other is
about a promising
Alzheimer’s vaccine which attacks the plaque build up
in the brain. Those possibilities have nothing to do
with stem cell research at all.
It is utterly irresponsible
and unconscionable to crush hopes of sufferers by telling
them that if the President will not expand their
preferred-and for many, their politically
preferred-option, that they have no hope. We should
expect that the people above would know about these things
and understand that these are huge reasons for hope. And
critics should think twice before calling pro-life ideas
naïve. What is truly naive saying there is no hope after
researchers began taking back their promises this summer.
Instead of cures, they are now talking about models for
understanding disease. That is a far cry from the
miraculous cures that are said to be at our fingertips if
the president would open the treasury to the special
interests of the biotech lobby.
This is a right to life
issue and it is about cloning. Human embryonic stem cell
research is wrong-as we noted in the same
RGJ article, because “No human being is expendable
for science or anything else.” Embryonic stem cell
research kills human embryos. It doesn’t matter how small
human embryos are. It doesn’t matter that they are going
to be thrown away or that some hypothetical good could
come of it. It is offensive and demeaning to human
dignity to say that any human being is "medical waste."
That's because human beings
have inherent ultimate value. This ultimate value
is intrinsic to us and woven into the fabric of our
being. It’s not earned, achieved, nor grown into or
gradually realized. It does not depend on our size, our
circumstances, being wanted or valued by others. We are
not expendable because our demise could benefit others.
Our ultimate infinite value belongs to us by our existence
as human beings from the first moment of our existence.
Once anyone becomes expendable, everyone becomes
negotiable. There’s no way to firewall the proposition
that certain humans are expendable and keep it from
ultimately impacting others.
So this is a right to life
issue. That makes it an ethical issue.
And why is this a cloning
issue? Because even if the president caved to the
powerful biotech industry, it is not likely that these
embryos would create the kind of genetic diversity
necessary for patient specific matches for mass cures.
Why proceed if there are no mass cures? To create those
genetic matches, researchers believe that cloning, using
the same technique that created Dolly the Sheep (somatic
cell nuclear transfer-or nuclear transfer), will be
necessary to create embryos almost identical to the
patient. The cloned near identical twin would be
destroyed for his or her stem cells in the hope that this
near match will not be rejected.
This is also a woman's
issue because cloning technology requires unfertilized
eggs. Dolly the Sheep was created after the 276th
attempt. Even if cloning were to become much more
efficient, it would require vast and enormous amounts of
unfertilized eggs to create matches for the 100+ million
Americans who could benefit. This would involve hyper-ovulatory
drugs and surgery to get the eggs. Risks include
infertility. If women are not willing to be exploited for
this kind of research and therapy-if it can work,
researchers are likely to use rabbits or other animals for
those eggs.
Non-embryonic stem cell
research would not require any of this.
Finally, the president's
policy has been good for science and sufferers. The
president's policy of limiting federal funding to
embryonic stem cells procured from embryos destroyed prior
to the date of the policy (August 9, 2001) has led
scientists to look for other avenues. The results have
been amazing. If the president had not stood his ground,
it is likely that much of this research would not have
been done and we would be left with embryonic stem cell
research, which to this date has produced no hope at all.
Don Nelson
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