Our Sanctimonious President

The president's stem cell decision fails on all fronts, well except for the most thoughtless and crass short term political gain. Bad ethics, bad science, and in the final analysis, bad politics. Ryan T. Anderson, "Perpetuating a Needless Stem-Cell War:

President Obama today fulfilled his campaign promise to lift federal-funding restrictions on research involving the destruction of human embryos. He couldn't have done so at a more inappropriate time, for just last week scientists made headlines again announcing yet another breakthrough in what is known as "induced pluripotent stem-cell" technology. Following up on the initial breakthrough in November 2007 that allowed scientists to produce the biological equivalent of embryonic stem cells without creating, using, or destroying any human embryos, scientists have continued to refine their methods. Last week's announcement was the latest in a long string of developments. If Obama truly wants to find honorable compromises that the entire nation can accept in good conscience and even endorse, he should be promoting these alternative sources.

But no matter--tiny humans-in-the-making can't vote, they're expendable. More on the breakthroughs made without sacrificing our ethics:

Harvard's George Daley described the study as "very significant," adding that he thought it was "a major step forward in realizing the value of these cells for medical research." Robert Lanza, of the prominent Advanced Cell Technology, said it was "very exciting work. . . . we're only a hair's breadth away from the biggest prize in regenerative medicine--a way to create patient-specific cells that are safe enough to use clinically."

This, of course, points to the scientific advantages that induced pluripotent stem cells bring.

First, they're cheaper and easier to work with than cells produced by killing human embryos. Not surprisingly, hundreds of labs have made the switch from embryonic stem cells to induced pluripotent ones.

Second, and very importantly, induced pluripotent stem cells are patient specific. As anyone familiar with organ transplants knows, immune rejection is a major hurdle to any form of regenerative medicine. Induced pluripotent stem cells clear this hurdle because they can be created using the patient's own skin cells; thus they will have his exact DNA sequence and will not be prone to immune rejection. For embryonic stem cells to do the equivalent, they would have to be created from an embryo produced by human cloning. 

Which raises another issue--opening a door that doesn't need to be opened, that we should fear to open--and opened with what has now become a pattern-- disingenuous remarks by our president: 

It is, therefore, critically important to note what Obama did not say this morning. He promised that he would make sure that "our government never opens the door to the use of cloning for human reproduction." He went on to add that "it is dangerous, profoundly wrong, and has no place in our society, or any society." This is certainly correct. But in pledging only to prevent reproductive cloning, Obama intentionally left the door open for research cloning. 

This is not just a matter of legality--this is a matter of our government funding this controversial research and experimentation on humans. We Americans are being forced to fund this despite our religious and/or ethical objections. And having the government involved raises more disturbing questions--should we invite another Tuskegee experiment--should science reign uber alles? If this is sanctioned by the government what would be our recourse as citizens? Sanctimony is unbecoming in a president and politics masquerading as science impedes real scientific inquiry and progress, and the real policy debate our democracy deserves.

More: RedState corrects the record on the LA Times' misstatements on the issue.