Embryonic Stem Cell Research

Conservatives have mounted another attack against common sense in government, science, and religion. They are against President Obama’s executive order releasing funds for stem cell research. Not content with failing to come up with solutions for problems in our economy, our health care system, and our foreign policy—problems that they themselves created—now they seek to eliminate important research involving, among other things, frozen embryos.

They claim that these frozen embryos are human beings, deserving protection from being destroyed in the cruel laboratories of Godless science. The National Right to Life Committee titled their response statement, Obama Order Opens Door to Widespread Killing of Embryonic Humans in Government-Funded Research. Spokesman Douglas Johnson said, "It is a sad day when the federal government will fund research that exploits living members of the human species as raw material for research."

Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D. wrote in the Boston Pilot, a newspaper for Catholics, "taking the lives of young humans cannot be pronounced ethical simply because it might result in huge benefits to older, more powerful, or more wealthy humans."

The Republican Party Platform calls for a ban on human cloning and for a ban on the creation of or experimentation on human embryos for research purposes. U.S. Congressman Mike Pence, chairman of the House Republican Conference, said, in a press release, "The President has ordered pro-life taxpayers to foot the bill for promoting overseas abortions and for scientific research that destroys human embryos. Sadly, the President's action ignores the miracles found in adult stem cell research. Embryonic stem cell research has failed to provide a single treatment to a living patient. It's unfortunate President Obama has chosen to support the empty promises of embryonic stem cells despite the living hope available in adult stem cell research."

In a statement released by his office, Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) said, "The president has rolled back important protections for innocent life, further dividing our nation at a time when we need greater unity to tackle the challenges before us. As we move forward, I am hopeful that the president will re-evaluate this and other controversial decisions that put government at odds with the sanctity of human life," Boehner said.

These citizens have a right to their attitudes, opinions, and beliefs, but examining their statements is the best way to reveal their weaknesses. To begin, let’s look at the respect that Conservatives say they have for the lives of the young.

Conservatives have never shown an unwillingness to exploit young, innocent life. For good or bad, Americans have been taking lives of young humans since the creation of the Republic. That process is called war. We also encouraged our young warriors to smoke by giving them free cigarettes, manufactured by companies run by Conservatives. MSN Encarta reports that during World War II (1939-1945), American physicians endorsed sending soldiers tobacco, and cigarettes were included in the field ration kits of U.S. armed forces personnel until 1975.

To Father Pacolczyk, I point out that older American citizens got very rich, not from exploiting embryos, but from sending living American children to coal mines, steel mills, and sweat shops, where thousands died. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire is only one example. Another is my late father-in-law, who, during the Depression, bribed his way into a job as a Chicago sandhog. He was too young for the job, but his age was no concern to the owners of the tunnel construction company. To them he was a laborer, an immigrant, and expendable. To Conservatives, young human life is sacred if it belongs to the children of the upper 1.5% of income earners. Or if it is an embryo. But once out of the womb and a poor, fully developed human, it is no longer sacred, and subject to scorn.

Republicans also hold human life sacred if it is a subject for political rhetoric that feeds citizens with misinformation. Many of us remember the case of Terry Schiavo, whose parents forced their son-in-law to keep her on life support even though her brain had ceased to function. We remember Senator Frist waxing eloquent about Mrs. Schiavo’s sacred life. And we remember that when Mrs. Schiavo finally died, her autopsy revealed that her brained had severely atrophied, and she could have never regained consciousness.

Now we have Representative Pence claiming that President Obama advocates "overseas abortions" which is hyperbole in the worst degree. Abortions are not really a part of stem cell research. Period. And while it is true that embryonic stem cell research has produced little of medical value, President Bush stopped the research before it could develop much at all. And it is pitiful that I have to remind Douglas Johnson of the National Right to life Committee that medical research and pharmaceutical companies exploit living members of the human species every day; that’s how medicines are tested.

Exceptions to the Republican Sacred-Life-Rule exist. They include the lives of servicemen or women, or American children with no health insurance, or children starving in Darfur, or children working in sweatshops abroad, making products for American retailers.

Like almost all Republicans, Congressman Mike Pence loves to protect taxpayers’ money, except for that $12 billion in cash lost in Iraq, still unaccounted for. During the time the Republicans controlled both houses of Congress, not one hearing was held to find out what happened to all that cash. However, Republicans also like spending taxpayers money on such things as unbudgeted warfare, rendition of unindicted American citizens, Richard Nixon’s pension, and Congressional pay raises, among many others.

Although they mishandle the tax payer’s money, the Republicans’ characterization of the Democrats as the party of tax and spend is accurate. Democrats do indeed tax citizens and then spend the revenues for programs that benefit the entire country. Republicans like to spend revenues, too. Lots and lots of revenues. But Republicans get their revenues from borrowing from China, Saudi Arabia, and the European Union. So Republicans are the party of "Borrow and Spend." And they don’t give a damn how the debt is paid.

Representative Boehner chided President Obama for not caring about the unity we need to face the great challenges ahead of us. It is a strange idea of unity that has led Boehner to oppose every measure that President Obama has sent to Congress. Republicans want to appear that they are working for the benefit of the citizens of the United States of America, while they actually work very hard to keep the initiatives of President Obama from succeeding.
Only one man in the Republican Party has refused to pose as a unifier or call for reconciliation with Democrats. He is true to his convictions and honest enough to call for the failure of Liberals in general and the agenda of President Obama in particular. That one honest man is Rush Limbaugh, a recovering drug addict who calls for long jail sentences for such people. Except himself, of course.

Finally, Conservatives, against all common sense, declare that embryos are human beings with rights. Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Director of Education at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, is the author of a column called Making Sense out of Bioethics that appears at the NCBC website (www.ncbcenter.org) and in various diocesan newspapers across the country. After earning a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Yale University, he did post-doctoral research at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School. He subsequently studied in Rome where he did advanced studies in theology and in bioethics.

Father Pacholcyzk is a well educated man, who has every right to express his attitudes, opinions and beliefs, just as any other American citizen does. But what he states is Roman Catholic dogma, which differs from those of other Christian faiths, non-Christian faiths, and even agnostics and atheists. We see what happens when religions control what governments do, and we see the tragic consequences when religions clash. People die in wars, and schoolgirls are not allowed to leave a burning building because they do not have approved garments to wear in public. I have no desire to be killed for my beliefs, or the lack of them. I do not want to live in a theocracy. I seek a thoroughly secular, Constitutional government, free of all religious entanglements.

Let religion be the basis for individual belief and action, but not for legislation and governance.

Let the embryonic stem cell research begin.