Thanks to Obama, new advancements made in stem cell research

Embryonic stem cells

What happens when you remove eight years’ worth of religiously motivated restrictions on science? Progress. And this is exactly what we’re seeing in the field of embryonic stem cell research.

WASHINGTON - Scientists can start using taxpayer dollars to do research with 13 batches of embryonic stem cells and the government says dozens more cell lines should be available soon, opening a new era for the potentially life-saving field.

President Barack Obama lifted eight years of restrictions on these master cells last spring. But $21 million-and-counting in new projects were on hold until the National Institutes of Health determined which of hundreds of existing stem cell lines were ethically appropriate to use.

"This is the first down payment," Dr. Francis Collins, NIH's director, said Wednesday as he opened a master registry. "People are champing at the bit for the opportunity to get started."

Thirteen stem cell lines — created by Children's Hospital Boston and Rockefeller University — are first on that list. Another 96 embryonic stem cell lines are undergoing NIH review, and 20 or more could get a decision by Friday, Collins said.

And researchers have notified the NIH that they may apply for approval of another 250 stem cell lines.

The only thing that ever really stands in the way of good scientific research and advancement is ideology, which is always certainly fueled by religion in one way or another. Bush made this exceedingly clear when his reason(s) for prohibiting stem cell research was that “murder is wrong”, thus illustrating how scientifically ignorant people like him have little to no understanding of what actually goes on in the field of embryonic stem cell research. There is no murder taking place. As their name suggests, stem cells used for research come from embryos, which are little more than shapeless and meaningless clumps of cells. In fact, “killing” them (whatever your definition of “killing” is) is made all the more irrelevant by the fact that they were meant to die regardless:

Federal law forbids using taxpayer money to create or destroy an embryo. All the stem cell lines involved in Wednesday's announcement were created from fertility clinic leftovers — embryos that otherwise would have been thrown away — using private money. NIH is reviewing the rest to see if they also meet ethics requirements for use in taxpayer-funded health research. Among the requirements: That the woman or couple who donated the original embryo did so voluntarily and were told of other options, such as donating to another infertile woman.

You get that, religious-right cranks and whiners? The only embryos being “killed” are those that were refused by fertility clinics and were destined to be flushed down the toilet anyway. They were doomed from the start, so rather than let them go to waste, scientists (and other rational, non-ideologically-twisted people) prefer to put them to good use and use them for research to advance our scientific and medical knowledge and, in the process, improve people’s lives from the knowledge we gleam and the medical and technological advancements we get.

(via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
Technorati tags: stem cell research · science · Barack Obama · George Bush