Future of Stem Cell Tests May Hang on Defining Embryo Harm

[cal04]

Source: Washington Post

With the active encouragement of the Bush administration, U.S. scientists in the past year have developed several methods for creating embryonic stem cells without having to destroy human embryos.

But some who now wish to test their alternatively derived cells have found themselves stymied by an unexpected barrier: President Bush's stem cell policy.

The 2001 policy says that federal funds may not be used to study embryonic stem cells created after Aug. 9 of that year. It is based on the assumption that the only way to make the cells is by destroying human embryos -- a truism in 2001 but not any longer.

As a result, the National Institutes of Health recently refused to consider a grant application for what would have been the first federal study to compare several of the new, less politically contentious stem cell lines.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/28/AR2007072800993.html?hpid=topnews

[Gregorian]

1. All while nicotine related deaths top around 1500 per day.

I don't get it. And I never will.

[Old and In the Way]

2. It is an intellectually, morally, and philosophically indefensible position.

Promoted by a man who can kill 100's of thousands of human beings based on lies with no sense of remorse, but pretends to have a problem with destroying microscopic matter.