Stem Cell Research is Illegal, Immoral and Unnecessary

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Stem Cell Research is Illegal, Immoral and Unnecessary

President Bush's limited federal funding of research relying on the destruction of human embryos violates federal statutory law. Christians have grieved for many years over the assault on unborn human life set loose upon our nation by the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision. Even that decision, however, did not affect all areas of law where lawmakers seek to protect developing human life. Because they are not covered by the Court's theory of reproductive privacy, human embryos outside the womb may be fully protected by law - and at least nine states have acted to protect these embryos from lethal experiments. In some states, destructive experimentation on human embryos is a felony.

Most Christians have grave concerns on this critically important issue of embryonic stem cell research. In our view, conducting research that relies on deliberate destruction of human embryos for their stem cells is illegal, immoral and unnecessary.

It is illegal because it violates an appropriations rider (the Dickey amendment) passed every year since 1995 by Congress. That provision forbids funding "research in which" human embryos (whether initially created for research purposes or not) are harmed or destroyed outside the womb.(1) National Institutes of Health guidelines approved by the Clinton Administration nonetheless give researchers detailed instructions on how to obtain human embryos for destructive cell harvesting, if they wish to qualify for federal grants in "human pluripotent stem cell research."(2) Clearly, obtaining and destroying embryos is an integral part of this project, even if the specific act of destroying embryos does not directly receive federal funds. By i...

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...uman Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (SCID)-X1 Disease," 288 Science 669-72 (28 April 2000).

16. K. Foss, "Paraplegic regains movement after cell procedure," The Globe and Mail (Toronto), June 15, 2001 at A1.

17. E. Ryan et al., "Glycemic Outcome Post Islet Transplantation," Abstract #33-LB, Annual Meeting of the American Diabetes Association, June 24, 2001. See: http://38.204.37.95/am01/AnnualMeeting/Abstracts/NumberResults.asp?idAbs=33-LB.

18. M. McCullough, "Islet transplants offer hope that diabetes can be cured," Philadelphia Inquirer, June 22, 2001 at A1.

19. D. Woodbury et al., "Adult Rat and Human Bone Marrow Stromal Cells Differentiate Into Neurons," 61 J. of Neuroscience Research 364-70 (2000) at 364 (emphasis added).

20. D. Prockop, "Stem Cell Research Has Only Just Begun" (Letter), 293 Science 211-2 (13 July 2001)(citations omitted).

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