Other alternatives to embryonic stem cell research

Well, President Bush shot down a bill that would have provided federal tax dollars to embryonic steam cell research. Opponents, of course, are outraged.

The one thing that always rings in my head is this: Some Americans point their fingers to some of the deplorable conditions of nursing homes and say, “People see how great a country is when they see how the old are treated.” But isn’t it more crucial of how we judge a country by how they treat the developments of human life?

Many feel that everyone could benefit from the destruction of embryonic stem cells in the hopes of finding cures for Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases, diabetes and cancer. The president had this to say about the controversial research.

“Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical, and it is not the only option before us,” said the president, as reported by USA Today. Certainly, truer words have never been spoken.

And what type of people will we be if we did intentionally destroy human life in the hopes of saving it? We would be no better than Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, with their hopes of cleansing the human race by killing millions of “non-perfect” people in death camps.

Anyway, it is important to note that the president isn’t against all stem cell research. In the USA Today article, he said that he signed an executive order that would “promote” research into creating non-human embryonic stem cells.

The alternatives, suggested the president, are “remarkable advances in science and therapeutic uses of stem cells drawn from adults and children and the blood from umbilical cords with no harm to the donor”, reported in an AFP news article.

The order, according to USA Today, does not include any new federal funding.

In the USA Today article, Sean Tipton, president of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research, a group that supports embryonic stem cell research, said the National Institutes of Health “has already been conducting (embryonic stem cell) research for the past 20 years.”

So, for two decades this type of atrocious research has been going on and all that can be shown from it is destroyed humans? We haven’t even cured a case of the sniffles much less cancer, so why are we beating a dead horse with this type of research? Since there are alternatives out there that will not harm a human embryo, then there should not be a problem to discontinue the use this unethical research.

We condemn Hitler’s actions for creating his perfect race. How will history judge us for experimenting on unborn humans?