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Senator
Frist Advances Human Embryo Destruction.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 29, 2005
The
Following Statement Can Be Attributed To Nevada LIFE
President
Don Nelson
Senate
Majority Leader Bill Frist has rejected President
Bush’s federal funding ban on Embryonic Stem Cell
Research (ESCR) limiting federal funding of research
to research on embryos prior to August 9, 2001.
It does not ban state or private funding. Frist
says this limited ban will slow necessary research.
Frist’s expansion would be limited to embryos who
are to be disposed of anyway regardless of when they
came into existence.
Everyone
wants regenerative medicine to succeed. But that
medicine must be ethical. The real question is
not whether this research will be slowed or advanced,
but whether we should do it at all. Nevada LIFE
opposes embryonic stem cell research because it
obtains embryonic stem cells by unethical means.
It requires killing human beings in the embryonic
stage of life. There is no doubt that human
embryos are not merely potential humans but humans
with great potential. Since the human embryo is
a human being, ESCR should not be conducted at all.
Senator
Frist’s intent to limit these human subjects for
experimentation to those who will be discarded is a
tacit acknowledgement that destructive research on
human embryos is wrong. Why the limitation if
ESCR is not wrong? If embryos are not human,
then limits on ESCR are irrational. Limiting the
number of subjects for destruction will not lessen the
immorality, exploitation, or human indignity of
embryonic stem cell research. Frist’s postion
says that there can be and will be classes of humans
who are expendable for research and for use as
medicine for others.
ESCR
is unnecessary and, after years and endless dollars of
investment, unproductive. Every legislator supporting
ESCR knows there are no embryonic stem cell successes
and that there have been over 50 successes involving
“adult” stem cells that do not require destruction
of human life. They all know about progress with
this research in regards to heart disease,
Parkinson’s, diabetes and women who have begun to
walk with braces after paralysis. There are over
300 human trials in process using adult stem cell
research. There are no human trials using ESCR.
Every legislator knows that there are plenty of
existing embryonic stem cell lines for years of basic
research.
Allowing more ESCR opens
the door for fetal farming and fetal tissue research.
If we can create and destroy life in the “just a
ball of cells” stage for science and therapy, we
will create, implant, grow and use unborn fetuses and
fetal clones for body parts just as we do in animals.
This is already legal in the United States and is
already written into some state laws so that fetuses
can be grown for research and transplantation
purposes. Frist’s attempts to limit further
expansion of ESCR will not slow the bio-ethical
nightmare that awaits us. It will fuel it.
President Bush has promised to veto this bill.
He has yet to veto anything. This must be his first in
order to stop the bio-ethical nightmare that awaits
us.
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