RNCILife ...

031501Calls For Ban On Stem-Cell

Research Involving Abortion

WASHINGTON, D.C. -At his first press conference since becoming Health and Human Services secretary, Tommy Thompson set off a firestorm of comments on March I when he encouraged scientists to continue to submit grant applications for research on stem cells taken by killing embryonic babies. Applications will be accepted until March 15. They will be reviewed by the National Institutes of Health, a process that is expected to take several months. During that time, a review of matters involving embryonic stem-cell research, called for by President Bush, will be underway. After its completion, Thompson made it clear that the final decision would come from the White House. Secretary Thompson said he would "sit down with the President of the United States and talk to him about it' "

Congress has passed a law prohibiting the use of federal funds for stem-cell research that involves the killing of human embryos. The NIH has drafted guidelines that interpret the law to allow such research, as long as the embryonic human lives were taken in non-federally-funded laboratories by privately funded scientists and then transferred to government-run facilities. Calling the situation "a little murky," Thompson said, "I'm very strongly involved with research and research is important, but there also are legal and ethical questions that have got to be resolved."

William Kristol addressed human embryo stem-cell research and other biomedical issues such as cloning and genetic manipulation in an editorial published in the February 12, 2001 issue of The Weekly Standard. In it, he quoted from The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis:

"[W]hat we call Man's power over nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.... The man-molders of the new age will be armed with the powers of an omni competent state and an irresistible scientific technique:

We shall get at last a race of conditioners who really can cut out posterity in what shape they please.... It is not that they are bad men. They are not men at all.... They have stepped into the void. Nor are their subjects necessarily unhappy men. They are not men at all: They are artifacts. Man's final conquest has proved to be the abolition of man."

Before this prospect, Kristol wrote, every other issue.pales not into insignificance, for many other issues are significant, but at least into lesser significance. The challenge of the scientific revolution in genetics and biotechnology, of scientific "progress" loosed from natural, human, or religious moorings, he said, is the challenge we face.

The Republican National Coalition for Life commented:

"It is time for President Bush to draw some lines. It is time for him and Secretary Thompson to come to grips with the enormity of the responsibility they carry, indeed, the responsibility for the fate of humanity. It is past time for our government to put a stop to the killing and, indeed, focus on the great good that is coming from experiments using stem cells derived from umbilical cord blood and adult organs and tissues that do not involve killing anyone.

"Please let President Bush know that you expect him to do the right thing and issue an executive order banning federal funding of stem cell research that involves the killing of embrionic human beings. In addition, we should urge him to send to Congress a bill that would criminalize such privately funded research. It is time to draw some lines,"

Contact President George W. Bush at fax: 202-456-2461; e-mail: president@whitehouse.gov.