Fayetteville Right To Life Home Page

IN DEFENSE OF PRESIDENT BUSH, RIGHT TO LIFE AND THE UNBORN
The following was submitted as a Fayetteville RTL response to a Fayetteville Observer op-ed on embryonic stem cell research. The Editorial page editor, Mr. Tim White, chose not to run it, featuring another excellent local response instead which we are delighted to link to below.

We declined Mr. White's offer to gut our own piece to a 250-word letter to the editor, however, since we felt that as Right to Life, along with President Bush, was the object of numerous gratuitous vilifying remarks in the op-ed they had featured that we should be granted a proportionate response, including the added credibility that an op-ed space would accord to a reply by an organization of our stature. Here is OUR response.....

Bush Veto Slams Shut One Big Door to Brave New World
In his July 30 op-ed, http://fayettevillenc.com/article?id=238557 , David Wilson, an executive in residence with the business school at Methodist College, lashed out with his characteristic vitriol (and, yes, snobbery) against “President Bush, the Republican Party, Right-to-Life folks,” et al., in reaction to the President’s recent veto of the Embryonic Stem Cell Research Bill. As President of Fayetteville Right to Life, I feel it is incumbent upon me to respond to these charges on behalf of those of us in the writer’s hometown who view his opinion as fundamentally baseless.

Mr. Wilson charges with melodramatic flair that the President has "ushered us into a new Dark Age." But is this true? Absolutely not. Truth be told: stem cell research of various sorts is ongoing right now, both here and abroad, including embryonic research. The only thing Mr. Wilson, and assorted Hollywood gadflies, and, of course, certain "researchers" themselves object to is our and President Bush's refusal to agree to throw millions of federal tax dollars at it. We believe this is wrong, both morally and scientifically.

It is wrong morally because working with embryonic stems cells (ESC) necessitates the destruction of intact human embryos--nascent human beings. That we can even consider this to be legitimate research is sad testament to three decades of the hardening of our collective social conscience by abortion. Ends do not always justify means. This was a big lesson we all claimed to have learned after the Nazi Nuremberg Trials. With regard to embryos-on-ice today just going to waste, according to a survey of IVF clinics nationally, 88% of them are actually awaiting future implant in their mothers; others could conceivably be adopted and raised by infertile couples. Many ESC researchers are, furthermore, motivated by the prospect of cloning, and ultimately cloning human beings, a looming Huxleyan technocratic scenario we should avoid at all costs!

Now, why is ESC research wrong scientifically? Because it has proved to be largely unfruitful

I think the chances of us getting a wide range of stem-cell therapies is almost nil because of the tremendous problems in working with these cells," Dr. David Stevens [executive director of the Christian Medical & Dental Associations] asserts. "It's difficult to control their differentiation -- how do you get them to become the type of cell you need in the quantities you need?" http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/8/232006d.asp

But, one may ask, what about all the applications and successes we hear about trumpeted in sundry news reports? These are, by and large, reports from the "adult" stem cell (ASC) research arena. This field of research is exploding with successes, some of it govt. funded, most not. ASC research can be conducted without the controversy that surrounds ESC research since a living human embryo is not destroyed.

Pluripotent ASC are found throughout the developed body and some only need to be nudged and stimulated to regenerate or "change into every cell, tissue, and organ of the body" (See: What the Media Won't Tell You About Stem Cell Research, at www.family.org ). To date various degrees of therapeutic success are being attained in ongoing trials utilizing ASC in treatments in animals and humans for multiple sclerosis, diabetes, blindness, cerebral palsy, hepatitis, neurodegenerative diseases, lung and renal tissue regeneration, etc. MAPCs (multipotent adult progenitor cells) found in bone marrow can even differentiate into cells found in all three of the body's germ layers!

With such discoveries as these currently unfolding in ASC research, why need we bother to destroy nascent human beings at the ESC stage of development? Could an ulterior motivation behind much of this be money and a desire to get all that can be gotten from Uncle Sam? Sadly, this seems to be the case: money, and the hubris itself that comes with defying the convictions of others that we should not dabble in these pursuits.

If ESC research were really as promising as we are told, private sector investment capital would be pursuing it in droves. The fact is, with the exception of some Gates and Buffet Foundation funding which is typically parceled out to whatever fave liberal cause du jour comes abegging, there is no vast amount of private funding rushing into this sector. This is why its advocates are so insistent in seeking government handouts. This economic reality only further proves that we and President Bush are right. Federal funding of ESC research (as opposed to that for ASC) would not only be morally wrong but would be simply another unwarranted waste of taxpayers' money as well.

For those interested, an excellent op-ed appeared in the Fayetteville Observer which covers other important aspects of the stem cell debate:

Fayetteville Online - Current Article Page Post script: In just the few short weeks since all of the above was broached, claims have been made in the Observer and other liberal media- and then DEBUNKED!-that stem cells could be taken from embryos for research purposes without destroying them.

Caution is urged however in accepting such claims, and track records for honest reporting on the part of some individuals and organizations involved in making them is illuminated by experts like bioethicist Wesley J. Smith, a fellow of Discovery Institute. Look for articles under his name at www.discovery.org/csc

Jeffrey C. Long
Fayetteville Right to Life
Former Member NC Public Health Study Commission
(1990-91)