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New discoveries pave the way for ethical stem-cell research, thanks to the president’s policies.
By Wesley J. Smith
Throughout his presidency, the Science Intelligentsia has castigated President Bush for placing limits on the federal funding of embryonic-stem-cell research (ESCR). Acting as if he had a banned ESCR, which of course he hadn’t, “the scientists” and their camp followers in the media and on Capital Hill accused the president of withholding cures from the ill in order to impose his religious beliefs on a reluctant public.
Little noted in all of the caterwauling, was that ESCR and human-cloning research (SCNT) have been funded bounteously — to the tune of nearly $2 billion. Not only has the National Institutes of Health put more than $150 million in recent years into human ESCR (about $40 annually), but according to a recent report put out by the Rockefeller Institute, to date about $1.7 billion has poured into ESCR and SCNT from philanthropic sources — and this doesn’t include the hundreds of millions granted annually by the states for cloning and ESCR experiments.
So what’s really going on here? Yes, the president’s policies have forced some research centers to set up separate labs for research on Bush-approved- and non-approved, stem-cell-research lines. But what really got under “the scientists” skin was the clarion moral message sent by the president: It is wrong to treat nascent human life as a mere natural resource to be sown, reaped, and consumed.
article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZGVlNjZjNjFiY2Q0NWJkODhiY2E3Y2NjYjVhYjIzMGI=%20
By Wesley J. Smith
Throughout his presidency, the Science Intelligentsia has castigated President Bush for placing limits on the federal funding of embryonic-stem-cell research (ESCR). Acting as if he had a banned ESCR, which of course he hadn’t, “the scientists” and their camp followers in the media and on Capital Hill accused the president of withholding cures from the ill in order to impose his religious beliefs on a reluctant public.
Little noted in all of the caterwauling, was that ESCR and human-cloning research (SCNT) have been funded bounteously — to the tune of nearly $2 billion. Not only has the National Institutes of Health put more than $150 million in recent years into human ESCR (about $40 annually), but according to a recent report put out by the Rockefeller Institute, to date about $1.7 billion has poured into ESCR and SCNT from philanthropic sources — and this doesn’t include the hundreds of millions granted annually by the states for cloning and ESCR experiments.
So what’s really going on here? Yes, the president’s policies have forced some research centers to set up separate labs for research on Bush-approved- and non-approved, stem-cell-research lines. But what really got under “the scientists” skin was the clarion moral message sent by the president: It is wrong to treat nascent human life as a mere natural resource to be sown, reaped, and consumed.
article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZGVlNjZjNjFiY2Q0NWJkODhiY2E3Y2NjYjVhYjIzMGI=%20