Stem Cell Issues
By Guest Columnist Ed Rivet, Michigan Right To Life Legislative Director
Just about every week,
a new breakthrough regarding stem cell research is published and used as a means to decry the outdated restrictive
laws governing scientific research in Michigan. What is omitted is that the advances are coming from using ethical forms of stem cells such
as adult, cord blood and amniotic fluid. Readers are led to believe it is ‘embryonic’ stem cells that are the key to finding cures and that
such research is illegal in Michigan. Neither is the case, nor will allowing embryo destroying research rejuvenate our failing economy.
Very simply, research using adult and transitional stem cells is ethical, does not harm the donor and has produced results. In contrast,
human embryonic stem cells (hESC) must be harvested from live human embryos, destroying them in the process. To date no cures have resulted
using hESC, while ethical forms of stem cells have produced 73 successful therapies and cures. “Every dollar spent on the failed and
unnecessary process of embryonic stem cell research, steals resources away from the potential of adult stem cell research. This is fiscally
irresponsible and medically unconscionable,” said a spokesman from the American College of Pediatricians.
The urgency to destroy embryos in order to harvest their stem cells for cures should be abandoned in the wake of a tidal wave of successes
using ethical sources of stem cells. Much of this life-saving research is happening right here in Michigan’s life science corridor. At the
University of Michigan, researchers have extracted adult stem cells from rats which have grown into ‘beating heart tissue’ in a laboratory
Petrie dish. Elsewhere, umbilical cord blood stem cells have been differentiated into pancreatic type cells which have actually secreted
insulin – a future means to treat diabetes.
Scientists, and the resources that fuel them are in stiff competition to find cures and patent the results. Some argue that is prolife to
utilize the ‘left-over’ or defective embryos housed in in vitro fertilization clinics for research, because they will be ‘thrown away’
anyway. If that were true, it would take about two weeks for researchers to finish them off, since there are not very many extra embryos
to go around. The ‘dirty little secret’ is that they really want to clone patient-specific embryos through a process called somatic cell
nuclear transfer, destroy them for their stem cells, grow them in a culture and transplant them back into the patient without fear of
rejection. Clearly the public will not stand for legalizing the creation of a ‘sub-class of human young’ for the sole purpose of destruction,
regardless of the outcome.
Those of us who truly value life, oppose hESC because like abortion, it ends a human life. Abortion eliminates an unintended pregnancy.
Whereas cloning intentionally creates a whole slew of human research subjects, for the sole purpose of exploitation and ultimate demise.
We cannot and must not allow this human calamity, bringing with it even broader repercussions for the future of mankind, to occur.