At Issue - Stem Cell Research

President Obama will announce on Monday that he will be reversing former President Bush's mandate of no federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. Thus, begins, or continues, an interesting discussion in America.

As most of us know, stem cells hold incredible potential for cures for diseases such as MS, diabetes, spinal cord injuries, and the like. So far, this sounds like a wonderful breakthrough. However, depending on where the stem cells come from, this also creates a moral issue.

Researchers have found that embryonic stem cells have a longer lifespan and are more adaptive to regeneration of damaged cells. However, once experimented on lab mice, they found that the older embryonic stem cells pretty much created cancer cells. Embryonic stem cells are extracted from blastocysts, which is the early form of an embryo. All of us began this way. Here is the moral problem - these embryos must be destroyed to extract the stem cells. Advocates say that these embryos would be discarded anyway because they were the result of in vitro fertilization. The thinking is pretty much, "might as well use them - they're here anyway." A little cold to my way of thinking.

Further research has found that adult skin cells and umbilical cord cells are every bit as promising as embryonic stem cells. And just recently, I read (I can't find the article anymore) that these cells don't grow into cancer cells like the old embryonic cells do. This is a fantastic development and really removes the ethical and moral issues associated with the research.

One would be hard pressed to find anyone opposed to finding a cure to severe diseases and injuries. But I beg the question, should a human being die so another can live? Especially if that human being hasn't had a chance to speak for him/herself? Proponents of the embryonic stem cell research argue that politics should stay out of the science labs. To a degree, they are right. Scientific breakthroughs that could cure deadly diseases and heal injuries need to be discovered without interference with the federal government. But, we have a moral and ethical obligation to our society. Scientists must be responsible in their research. We are not trying to construct a Frankenstein's monster, but we as a free people must make sure that no scientist or laboratory ever tries to do something that would be questionable.

I praise our scientists for finding better resources for stem cells, and I hope they find these non-objectionable sources to be more successful than the embryonic stem cells.