Stem Cell Facts

Robert P. George, a professor of jurisprudence at Princeton, and the Rev. Thomas V. Berg, executive director of the Westchester Institute for Ethics and the Human Person, WSJ, "Six Stem Cell Facts":

Most scientists acknowledge that ESCs will not provide therapies for many years, if ever. Their therapeutic potential is, at best, speculative. They cannot be used now, even in clinical trials, because of their tendency to produce tumors. So it comes as no surprise that many scientists now admit that their primary interest in pursuing ESC research lies not in the hope for direct cell transplant therapies, but in the desire to enhance basic scientific knowledge of such things as cell signaling, tissue growth and early human development.

We believe that embryo-destructive research cannot be morally justified, even if it really were likely to produce cures for dreaded afflictions. We fervently share the desire for cures, but we believe that biomedical science compromises its own integrity when it destroys human life in the cause of trying to save it.

As they point out as well, ESC research goes on unimpeded in the private sector, it is only government funding at issue for new lines of ESC research, and other kinds of stem cells offer more immediate promise.

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