“Stem Cell Debate is Over Ethics, Not Science”

I have a piece in today’s Sacramento Bee rounding out my critique of the Obama ESCR policy and his rescission of the Bush executive order requiring the Feds to fund alternative sources. The new policy no longer provides funding of pluripotent stem cells that have the potential to bridge the bitter cultural and policy divides that rend our country. From the conclusion to my piece :

If pursuing the best and most ethical science were truly the goals, why deflect increased support for this promising research to which no one objects? Perhaps it is because this debate involves more than stem cells taken from embryos “left over” from in-vitro fertilization—as the argument is usually couched—which brings us back to ethics. In the wake of the Obama changes in federal policy, the New York Times editorially threw down a gauntlet, calling for both the rescission of the Dickey Amendment and federal funding of human therapeutic cloning research. Now that the Bush restrictions are history, look for these battles—which again are not science debates—to flare in the years to come. In this sense, embryonic stem cell research threatens to become a launching pad to an ever-deepening erosion of the unique moral status of human life.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.