[Edited, via Center for Inquiry] New House Majority Leader, Congressman Steny Hoyer, has scheduled a vote for January 11, 2007, on the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act. Yes, that's just two days from now.
Reps. Diana DeGette (CO) and Mike Castle (DE) are reintroducing the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act (#H.R. 3) in the House, and Sens. Tom Harkin (IA) and Arlen Specter (PA) are bringing it to the Senate (#S. 5.).
The bill is the same one President Bush vetoed last year.
Please contact your representatives immediately and urge them to vote YES on H.R. 3, the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act. If you live in a district with a new representative, it would be especially helpful for you to call the office directly and tell the staff how important it is for the representative to vote YES.
In 2001, President Bush issued an Executive Order limiting federal funding of stem cell research. The order banned funding of research on any "cell lines" that did not already exist at the time of the order. Because federal funding is the major route enabling basic science, the Bush ban has effectively stalled most stem cell research in the United States, at least wherever embryonic stem cells were involved.
We know that we can coax stem cells into becoming like any cell in the body. This is similar to what happens in developing embryos as their cells differentiate naturally. Scientists abroad and even a few scientists here who use private funds have already managed to grow nerve cells and other tissues using embryonic stem cells. But since the time of Bush's ill-conceived ban the United States has failed to commit anything like the tremendous resources it could and otherwise would to this profoundly promising medical research.
Currently, there are nearly 400,000 frozen embryos available for research. These clumps of about twenty or so cells (called blastocysts) were left over from in vitro fertilization and will almost certainly never otherwise be utilized. If not used for medical research, they will perish.
Some argue that "adult" stem cells should be used instead of these embryonic
stem cells, but embryonic stem cells have been much more effective in stem cell research, and will likely be more effective in future stem cell therapies as well.
Since these frozen embryos have the potential to cure diseases, relieve suffering, and save lives if they used for stem cell research, it seems wrong to withhold federal stem cell research funds.
No rational legal, moral, or ethical code treats blastocysts as equivalent to living human persons. But even if we were to assume that clumps of twenty or so cells were "persons" in any intelligible sense, according to what kind of reasoning would it be justified to use the existing stem cell lines as Bush inadequately authorized American scientists to do, but not to create new ones? It is difficult to see what kind of ethical principle justifies such a distinction of materially indistinguishable blastocysts. And it is difficult to see how the "benefits" (whatever these might be) that could come from allowing these frozen cells simply to perish outweighs in any obvious sense the possible benefits to living human beings suffering or dying from potentially treatable medical conditions.
Congress can override the President's damaging and ill-considered ban. Please vote to reauthorize funding for this vital area of research so that America can join the 21st century and rejoin the world's scientific community in the work to ameliorate human suffering through our collaborative intelligence and effort.
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