Embryonic Stem Cell Research (ESCR) has been one of the most controversial issue of our day.  Proponents and opponents are very passionate for their side.  On June 20, 2007 President Bush vetoed Senate Bill S-5, the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act, passed by Congress this same month.  The most glaring part of this debate is the amount of misinformation.  If we read the mass media we are led to believe that the opponents of ESCR are just religious zealots who oppose science and are against a very promising possible cure for many human diseases that could cure such things as Alzheimer’s disease, cancer and the like.  What kind of a person would be against such medical advance?  We are often presented with seriously injured people such as the late Christopher Reeves, who was paralyzed from the neck down, who begged for this research to go on so that one day he could walk again.  Nancy Reagan, President Reagan’s wife, asks for this research to go on so that Alzheimer’s disease can be cured.  Anyone opposing this must be very misguided you would think. 

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid made the following statement after the President’s veto:  “our best scientists continue to work with one hand tied behind their back.  A year has passed, and countless thousands more Americans have been diagnosed with cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, Parkinson’s, spinal cord injuries, heart disease and ALS.  A year has passed, but today President Bush plans to veto the stem cell bill for the second year in a row.” 

My goal, as I have made clear in past articles on this blog, is to be logical and look at the facts and not the raw emotion of the issue.  This is what I want to do in this article.  First, lets look at what the real issue is.  Contrary to what we are led to believe by the mainstream press, the issue is not banning research outright for ESCR.  The issue is not having the taxpayer fund this research.  Private research is going on unabated and is legal.  Embryonic Stem Cells are controversial, Adult Stem Cells are not.  Adult stem cells have had many successes while ESCR has had none.  These facts are never mentioned in the press. 

The opponents of ESCR are made to look like ogres that do not want people such as Christopher Reeves to be cured; they are portrayed by the media as imbeciles who are against reason and logic.  Here is where we need a little sanity.  Let’s look at the facts:

ESCR is controversial and opposed by pro-life people because it destroys human lives.  An embryo is the first stage of every human life; you and I were once embryos.

Opponents of ESCR are made out to be anti-science.  This is flatly false.  Science confirms that human life begins at conception.

ESCR has produced no medical benefits to date.  On the contrary, ESCR has proved to be unstable in medical experiments.  Embryonic Stem Cells have proven to be very problematic.  First there are concerns that the cells will be rejected by the patient’s immune system, requiring the patient to undergo lifelong immune suppression.  Second there is the serious problem that embryonic stem cells form tumors when transplanted to adult tissue.  Finally, there is the disturbing fact that science has thus far provided no convincing evidence that embryonic stem cells could be reliably differentiated into normal adult cell types.  Dr. Maureen Condic, who is a stem cell researcher, reported this in a fine article in the January 2007 issue of the magazine, First Things.  To read this article click on the last hyperlink cited earlier.

Pro-life people always make it very clear that they oppose ESCR because it destroys human life.  The opponents, in return, always seem incredulous as to why we oppose it, as if they do not get it.  Let me state it again:  ESCR destroys human life.  How can a pro-life person say that it is OK to destroy human life for the sake of scientific research?  Would you approve if we experimented with newborns under the age of one perhaps, to see if we could extract some possible cure for a disease, if it would kill the baby?  Why not?  Human dignity begins when life begins.  This is simple logic.  

ESCR is promoted very heavily, for the most part, based on misinformation, false hope and outright lies.  I know that this is a very serious charge.  Let me explain.  We are told over and over that scientists have promised that embryonic stem cells will cure all kinds of diseases, but just what scientist have made this claim?  The answer is no one.  I will refer you to a compelling article by Dr. Robert P. George of Princeton University called “The Big Lie.”  Dr. George was responding to something that John Kerry said during the Presidential debates of 2004 when he made this claim.  The fact is that not one cure has been found with embryonic stem cells.  As it now stands there are insurmountable obstacles before embryonic stem cells can even be tried in humans. 

We can agree to disagree on these issues but we have to be honest and not hide or lie about these facts.  Whether you agree with me or not is not the issue, the issue is let’s be truthful with the facts.  I can respect your disagreement but I cannot and will not respect deceit under any circumstances and I believe, as I have just pointed out, the pro-ESCR side has engaged in deceit to get their way. 

In April 2007 the United States Supreme Court affirmed the 2003 law, signed by President Bush, banning what has come to be called “Partial Birth Abortion.” This was the first time since Roe vs. Wade in 1973 that any restrictions have been put on abortion. Since the Roe vs. Wade decision a culture of death has taken hold of the United States. Many will be appalled at this assessment. But, let’s look at some trends since 1973.

1. Abortion for any reason has been accepted today as a “constitutional right” even though you cannot find it anywhere in the Constitution.

2. Euthanasia is considered a compassionate way to die. At this writing, the California Legislature has proposed another euthanasia bill, even though five other attempts have failed in the last ten years – the bill, AB 374, is called “The Compassionate Choices Act,” which is patterned after the Oregon “Death With Dignity Act.” The proponents of this measure are ruthless in attacking those who do not agree with them. When Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles criticized Fabian Nuñez, Speaker of the California Assembly, for promoting this measure, the Los Angeles Times went on the attack by publishing a story very critical of him and his position on this issue. Radio ads have continually been aired in Los Angeles attacking Cardinal Mahony on this issue and all those who oppose it; both are pure ad hominem attacks. No argument was presented to support Physician Assisted Suicide, only attacks on those who disagree with their worldview. This has been the modus operandi of the “left”. Logic or reason is never an issue – only emotion. The most ominous part of this is that it is not the voters who are proposing this or voting on it, it is the elite leftists who want to impose their morality on the rest of us. If this was done by the “right” the mass media would be in a frenzy, but in this case the media’s silence on this is deafening.


3. Strong proponents of euthanasia, such as Dr. Jack Kevorkian, aka, Doctor Death, are considered champions of the helpless by most people who support abortion and euthanasia. Dr. Death was sentenced to 10 to 20-years in a California prison for second-degree murder for his role in assisting 130 people to commit suicide. Dr. Death was released from prison today, June 1, 2007. He served eight years of his sentence. He states that he will continue to promote assisted suicide but will not break the law. During his assisted suicide career he was a media darling, and featured favorably on TV’s 60 Minutes program. Upon his release, Mike Wallace, a main correspondent for 60 Minutes, hugged him warmly as if he was a long lost friend.

4. The State of Oregon has had a euthanasia statute since 1998.

5. Partial birth abortion, also known as Dilation and Extraction (D & E), is a gruesome procedure where a perfectly healthy, and viable, unborn baby, ready to be delivered, is pulled out of the womb, feet first, leaving only a portion of the head in the birth canal. The abortionist then crushes the baby’s skull with scissors as if it was a crab leg on a dinner plate, until the baby stops kicking and convulsing and dies.  Click here to see drawings of this procedure. The Alan Guttmacher Institute estimates that there are about 4,000 to 5,000 such abortions per year. Dr. Alan Guttmacher is the former President of Planned Parenthood.

This procedure, contrary to what the pro-choice side contends, is never medically necessary; it is done solely to abort the unborn child. In arguments to the Supreme Court challenging this law, it was argued that this is the safest procedure for this type of abortion. Safest? For whom? How is this the safest procedure when a baby ready to be delivered alive and well has its head crushed in order to kill it. In California, we have the death penalty on hold because lethal injection is considered cruel and unusual punishment. What am I missing here? I’m confused.

Dr. Martin Haskell who claims he has done more than 700 partial birth abortions himself says that 80% of all such procedures are elective and the other 20% are done for genetic reasons. None are to save the life of the mother or for other “health” reasons. It is not only Dr. Haskell that says this procedure is never medically necessary. The American Medical Association has determined that partial birth abortion is never necessary under any circumstances. Yet, despite such facts liberal politicians such as Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, liberal Supreme Court Justices and other leftist organizations have expressed outrage over the Court’s decision. Partial birth abortion, along with all other abortions is accepted as a “woman’s right to choose.” Just look at the drawings referred to above to see how a partial birth abortion is done and tell me that the aborted baby is not a live human being. I will change my position if anyone can provide me with some solid evidence that that is not a human being.

The main stream media, and specifically, the Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper, mocked the recent Supreme Court decision affirming the partial birth abortion ban by printing a cartoon which depicted the five justices who voted to affirm the ban as Catholics who are beholden to the Church even though it is a well known fact that Catholics, as a group, are no different in being pro-choice as any other group; all you have to do to prove this point is to look at Catholic politicians who are militantly pro-choice, such as Senators Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Joe Biden, Patrick Leahy and dozens of others, but then the truth never got in the way of the pro-choice side in order to advance their cause. I’m sure that the Philadelphia Inquirer will never mock these pro-choice Senators who are on their side and claim that their pro-choice position is due to the pressure from the Catholic Church.

Since 1978 there have been 1.5 million or more abortions per year. As of today there have been 47, 481,500 abortions performed since abortion became legal in the United States. In Oregon, the only state with a legal euthanasia statue, the first year there were 24 Doctor prescriptions for lethal doses; in 2003 there were 67 such prescriptions.

Even if you were to agree that such assisted suicide laws like the Oregon law was acceptable, I want to bring out one glaring problem: How do we know that doctors and patients will follow the rules of the law? There is no way to assure that there are no abuses. The so-called “slippery slope” argument is the strongest case against any such laws. Let’s consider the following potential scenarios:
• How can we assure that no one provides a patient with a deadly prescription without properly following the rules?
• In cases where the patient is incompetent who is to say that that person knows what he/she wants?
• In cases where the patient is a ward of the state or dependent on state medical help, who is to say that someone could declare that that person is terminal and could be administered a lethal dose, if for no other reason than to save the state money?
• How do we know that the doctors or the medical facilities are following the rules? Oregon admits that they depend on what is reported and cannot assure that the law is being followed.

These are just a few points. There are countless scenarios for which we cannot even foresee today that could occur and provide for abuses. My point is that once you open the door you cannot close it and it will be too late. For an eerie and morbid example of what can happen once you open the flood gates of assisted suicide is to look at the Netherlands assisted suicide example – it is chilling. Doctors in the Netherlands have a free rein on who dies. The genie is out of the bottle and no one is in control. If you want to see additional data on the Netherlands case click here for more information. You will find dozens of articles from many newspapers, magazines and other sources.

I’ve left out all religious and other moral reasons for opposing assisted suicide laws, not because they are not important – they are, but I’ve tried to point out here that even before we go to the word of God, there are many, many other reasons why this law is a killer.