Op-ed: GOP wants to close doors on stem cell research
September 15th, 2008Writing in the Boston Globe, Jonathan D. Moreno and Rick Weiss say the Republican platform committee has gone beyond the Bush administration’s policy and now calls for a ban on the creation of or experimentation on any human embryos for research purposes.
The irony of the platform committee’s position, they say, is that stem cell scientists this year made major progress in understanding Down syndrome, which affects Palin’s youngest child. The scientists say their research makes it possible to envision treatments that could be helpful to people with Down syndrome. An excerpt:
Do McCain and Palin appreciate that the new research in diabetes and Down syndrome, not to mention similar recent advances for other diseases, simply could not have proceeded without the lessons being learned from embryonic stem cells? Apparently their party’s platform writers don’t.
So who’s in charge of Republican policy on this important question, and what exactly would the policy on stem cell research be in a McCain presidency? These are questions worth asking this fall.
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on Monday, September 15th, 2008 at 3:31 pm and is filed under Campaign 2008, Down syndrome, diabetes, politics, research news.
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September 15th, 2008 at 10:07 pm
I don’t understand the fascination with embryonic stem cells when it has been proven time and again that adult stem cells (from umbilical cord blood or from a person’s own body)are just as…if not more…effective without the ethical baggage of embryonic stem cells. Embryonic stem cells also have the added problem of tumor formation in many cases. The authors of the above article need to do some more research, because much of what they are saying is just not true. The new lines of research into Down syndrome were obtained from skin and bone marrow of people with Ds (not from embryos).
Editor’s note: See articles here — http://www.livescience.com/health/080808-ap-stem-cells.html and here http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/27/AR2008082701829.html
The authors further state:
“With those mechanisms now visible for the first time, scientists said, they can start to envision treatments that could at least reduce some of those deficits in newborns or young children with the syndrome — treatments that even the most accepting and loving mother of a baby with Down syndrome would probably accept with gratitude if available”
Well no, not all of us would.