Embryonic Stem Cell Bill Is First Step To Cloning

President Bush vetoed efforts to overturn his embryonic stem cell policy this summer.  The president's policy allows federal funding for embryonic stem cell research using embryonic stem cells from embryos killed before August 9, 2001, the date of the policy.  It prohibits federal funding of embryonic stem cell research using embryonic stem cells procured after that date.  It does not ban state or federal funding.  Look for Nevada legislators to try to pass something like this even though our neighbors in CA voted to give $3 billion dollars to an agency with no state oversite to conduct this kind of research. 

So the policy does not ban embryonic research, though I wish it did. 

Nancy Pelosi has said the Congress will resubmit the bill to overturn the president's policy.  This legislation, which was supported by every Nevada Congressman and Senator, except Senator Ensign, would overturn this policy and fund the research regardless of the date the embryos were killed.  The embryos to be destroyed would be procured from fertility labs.

There are a lot of problems with those embryos and the stem cells that could be gotten through their destruction.  About 3 percent in those clinics are available for research.  That would not provide the kind of genetic diversity necessary for patient specific matches and would cause rejection problems.

But that's not really the purpose of the legislation and the legislation feigns morality by saying that the embryos could not be produced for research.  They have to be, in so many words, left over.  The real reason is that politicians have not been able to sell cloning to the public.  For all the phony polling about cloning and killing embryos, the public doesn't want it.  They do not support creating a supply of embryos for research.  This first step of getting more embryos from fertility labs is to get the public used comfortable with embryo killing a first step to cloning.  If we can kill embryos from fertility clinics, why can't we clone and kill them that more good may result.  That's the purpose.  Each legislation must be weighed on its own merits, not necessarily because it could lead to further problems, but this is why the legislation has been proposed.  It's to anesthetize us to cloning.  Look for it to be introduced in the next Congress.