In the Open Against South Dakota’s Embryonic Stem Cell Research Ban

By Bob Ellis on October 19th, 2009

j0289365It seems the folks pushing the destruction of living human embryos are becoming a little more transparent about their designs.

When word first came out about a month ago, the push to overturn South Dakota’s ban on embryonic stem cell research was shrouded in deceptive language about strengthening our ban on human cloning.

But in this Argus Leader article today, David Volk and associates seem to be admitting they have human life in the cross hairs:

In a drive to get an initiative before voters in 2010 that would allow embryonic stem cell research in South Dakota, David Volk is convinced he has tapped into a wellspring of enthusiasm.

“For 40 years I’ve been in South Dakota politics in one form or another. I’ve never been involved in a campaign for a candidate or an issue campaign where I’ve had this response,” says the former state treasurer, who suffered from cancer, an area of inquiry for stem cell research.

If this is actually true and not just self-promoting hype (“Come on now, you need to support this and get with the herd,” he’s telling you), then a lot of people know very little about this issue…or simply don’t care about the value of human life.

You’ll notice in this article that they try to de-humanize the issue by calling living human embryos “blastocysts.” Well, who cares about a “cyst” anyway; cysts are bad, right?

Isn’t it amazing how just a little twist on language can hide the destruction of innocent human life and actually make it seem like a positive thing?

Rationally speaking, there is simply no justification to pursue life-destroying embryonic stem cell research.

Despite years of research in countries around the world, funded both publicly and privately, there has not been a single successful medical therapy derived from embryonic stem cell (ESC) research.

What’s more, this line of research is fraught with moral and practical problems.  It destroys living human embryos in the process of harvesting embryonic stem cells, bringing to mind the human experimentation and destruction of human life carried out by the Nazis–something the civilized world resoundingly condemned in the wake of World War II.

ESC therapy also faces the hurdle of tissue rejection.  Any time foreign tissue is inserted into a human being, the host body recognizes this is foreign and attempts to reject it.

Another serious problem with ESC is its propensity for generating tumors in the recipient.  Several months ago we learned of a young Israeli boy who received ESC therapy in Russia, only to have his body reject the foreign tissue…and produce tumors on his brain and spinal cord.

For all these problems, not a single medical treatment has been derived from ESC research.

Meanwhile, adult stem cell therapy (using stem cells obtained from a patient’s own body) have already produced somewhere between 70 and 80 successful treatments for a variety of aliments including brain injuries, stroke, retina regeneration, heart tissue regeneration, angina, diabetes, bone cancer, nerve regeneration, cerebral palsy, cartilage regeneration, Parkinsons, kidney damage, liver cancer, lupus, multiple sclerosis,  leukemia and many others.  There is no “promise” or “hope” or “maybe” with adult stem cell therapy–it is already helping people.

Just last week we learned in Scientific American that doctors in Cincinnati used adult stem cells to regenerate missing cheekbone tissue for a 14 year old boy.

Scientists have even learned to manipulate adult stem cells to act like embryonic stem cells, and adult stem cells can come from a variety of sources such as fat cells, nasal and dental tissue and more.

Adult stem cell therapy also does not destroy innocent human life, and has no problems with tissue rejection or tumor generation.

The case for adult stem cell therapy over the life-destroying embryonic stem cell research has become so obvious and plain that even a “mainstream” media source, US News and World Report, is admitting ESC research is unnecessary.

The only ones who will benefit from this assault on the protection of innocent human life are those biomedical suppliers and those who stand to get research grant cash.  Those who lose won’t just lose a political battle: they will lose their lives.

South Dakotans need to push themselves away from the table of death-culture pap being fed to them by the “mainstream” media and learn about this important issue for themselves.

When they do, they will see that unscrupulous people  mean to take them for a ride at taxpayer-expense, devaluing human life in the process.

And that’s not a South Dakota value.

Note: Reader comments are reviewed before publishing, and only salient comments that add to the topic will be published. Profanity is absolutely not allowed and will be summarily deleted. Spam, copied statements and other material not comprised of the reader’s own opinion will also be deleted.

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Categories: Commentary
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  • Brian Rutledge
    I understand why many people are opposed to ESC research. .It prevents a human child from living outside of the womb . This is particularly true of the Christian religion which feels all life is sacred and ESCR prevents a child from getting to know God. It would seem that any act that prevents a child from being born and thus knowing the word of God would be an abomination by true Christians.

    But this isn't the case. Most married true Christians prevent a child from knowing God routinely. They do it with birth control pills. Prior to 1930, any form of contraception( except abstinence) was considered immoral by Christians even if you were married.The Christianity practiced by our Founders was adamantly opposed to contraception, which was more primitive then by our standards, but nonetheless available.

    Children were considered a blessing from God and mankind should not interfere with it. I just wonder if any of todays evangelical married Christians feel conflicted when they routinely use artificial means (pills) to prevent life.A life that will never get to know God. Do they really have that right ?
  • Some Christians do have a problem with birth control, and I agree with their concerns up to a point. But I think the majority of Christians don't have a problem with birth control so much as they have a problem with what abortion does (and the destruction of human embryos caused by cell harvesting for embryonic stem cell research is basically an abortion for research purposes rather than one of pure personal convenience).

    And what abortion does is end a human life that has already started. Human life does not exist before a sperm and egg join, so no human life is ended and destroyed by birth control. It may thwart the purpose of God that we procreate and reproduce, but it doesn't end a human life.

    Abortion ends a human life, and that is murder.

    That is what Christians truly have a major problem with.
  • Julien
    Just so you know, there are new protocols available now that allow human ESC production without the need to destroy an embryo, but merely by taking one cell of it and change this single cell into a human ESC line (Geens et al, 2009; Feki et al., 2008). Taking one cell of an embryo before implantation is not harmful and do not reduce its ability to developp to term. It is actually routinely used in assisted reproduction in order to check the embryo normality before transfering it to the mother...

    So it seems after all the ethical issues surrounding hESC production are getting alleviated.

    And to date, hESC research has entered clinical application with the recent approval of phase I clinical trial for the use of hESC on patients with spinal cord injury (trial organised by Geron Corp.)
  • Actually that's NOT the case. This claim was made with great fanfare...only to be revealed as yet another smokescreen over ESC research. It STILL destroys the human embryo.

    And as I said, we have learned how to make adult stem cells act like embryonic stem cells, making the harvesting of embryonic stem cells unnecessary.

    When you consider the hurdles presented by ESCR, the successful track record of adult stem cell therapy, and the potential of techniques to make adult stem cells behave like embryonic ones, there is no rational reason whatsoever to sell our souls (or waste our time and money) on embryonic stem cell research.

    I know the death culture is eager to destroy innocent human life where ever it can find an opportunity, but it simply makes no sense.
  • Julien
    There has been 3 reports on hESC derivation from the single cell of an embryo: Geens et al., 2009; Feki et al., 2008 and Klimanska et al., 2006. They were all published in 3 different journals, among which Nature (for the 2006 report). None of them has been retracted so far.
    On what ground can you say that these articles reported false discoveries? Do you have any new facts?

    And lastly, human induced plutipotent lines (hESC-like) could not have been obtained from adult stem cells without preliminary researches on hESC.
  • I'd have to go back and look it up, but I distinctly remember the claim you mentioned 1-2 years ago that embryonic stem cells could be harvested without destroying the embryo...only to be followed within months the revelation that this was false.

    I have to say, frankly I find your lust to destroy innocent human life disgusting. When there is a not only promising but PRODUCING alternate line of research, I cannot see this mindless zeal to pursue a course destructive to human life (both the life it destroys in the harvesting and the host life it harms with tumors, etc) as anything but purely dark and disgusting.
  • Brian Rutledge
    Bob You said adamantly that it's NOT the case that a few cells can be removed from an embryo without harming that embryo and so ESCR still kills a human life. You then admitted that you remember reading it somewhere. To make a factual statement like you did, you also need to provide proof of that statement. Would you please inform us where your facts came from that says removal of a few cells from an embryo destoys that embryo. If what you say can't be corroborated, then you shouldn't have any objection to this particular research line since life is preserved.
  • First let me provide the "proof of the obvious."

    If scientists had indeed actually developed a method for extracting stem cells from a human embryo without destroying the embryo, we can be certain this would have been touted in every news agency on the planet repeatedly for weeks and months on end. How do we know this? Because the mere hope of an ESCR success is touted with great fanfare; an actual breakthrough that would overcome the major moral objection to ESCR would generate pop-culture enthusiasm on the scale of the V-E and V-J Day celebrations. The absence of such celebration is in itself proof that no such breakthrough has occurred. Proponents of ESCR simply could not be quiet about such a breakthrough.

    And speaking of being quiet about such a breakthrough, I took the time (that I did not have earlier this morning) to research what I remembered a bit. In 2006 it was announced with great fanfare that we HAD made such a breakthrough, that Dr. Robert Lanza had solved this problem! Only we soon found out that, well, a proposal, that it had not actually been done. I can propose that it might be possible to teleport human beings from one point on the globe to another through an energy transfer...but as you can see, a proposal is a long way from actually doing it.

    What's more, even if Dr. Lanza's proposal were to be tried, several problems with it have still been identified.

    For instance, harvesting embryonic stems cells from the human embryo--even if it didn't immediately destroy it--would still have the result of removing approx. 12% of the embryo's genetic material from it. How is this likely to affect the development of the human being...with 12% of its genetic material removed? The results could be horrific, inhuman and inhumane. Even if the human being could succeed in developing to achieve birth, what problems might that person encounter as they continued to develop into adulthood with part of their genetic makeup missing? Even many IVF clinics take the step of notifying couples of the risk to the embryo from even testing on the embryo for genetic disorders. How much more so the danger from harvesting stem cells and removing a significant portion of the human being's genetic material?

    Experimenting on human beings like this--without their consent--and the potential harm reminds me of the Nazis and their human experiments.

    It is also entirely possible that the totipotent cells themselves which are harvested from an embryonic human being may themselves have the potential to develop into a twin but separate human being...and again we deal with the issue of destroying an innocent human being.

    All these risks and problems bring us back around again to the fundamental question at the heart of this issue: do we really respect and value human life? I think it's obvious from our cavalier attitude about experimenting with embryonic humans and placing them at risk that we do NOT have that vital level of respect and value.

    I'll say it again: I cannot help but find this unbridled lust to experiment with and destroy innocent human life, especially when there is another promising and producing line of research to be disgusting and reprehensible in the extreme.

    Ignorance is one thing. But a refusal to acknowledge the dangers inherent in this area and a refusal to show the proper respect for human life after having had that pointed out...well, that leaves me at the edge of my ability to maintain decorum
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