Obama wants Embryonic stem cell research - and more PR provided by the Times

Obama signs a bill allowing US funding for organisations that promote Abortion and is about to release state funding for embryonic stem cell research. As if by coincidence, we have a press release by Geron masquerading as objective news in the London Times: Stem cells give hope to accident victims says the paper on 23rd January, front page. This is being followed up on the 24th by another big story. The operative word is "hope", as the potential of embryonic research has not yielded thereapeutic results. The Times article on the 24th January by the same author, Mark Henderson, their Science editor, Blindness is the next target for stem-cell therapy after US trials at least has some dissenting comment from experts in the field, asking people to lower their expectations.

The potential for implanted embryonic cells to heal is also a potential for them to create tumours in the host body. This is because their dynamic role in developing the embryo into a foetus makes them unstable, thereby undermining their use in therapeutic applications. The hype over embryonic stem cells is a triumph of faith and hope over science - as well as a triumph for scientists lobbying for Government cash. Every mainstream news article I have ever read on this subject obscures the disctinction between adult stem cell research (successful and ethical) and embryonic research (failed, unethical).

I also believe that a lot of ideological investment goes into embryonic research: it is a buttress for the pro-abortion culture, another weapon in the battle to instrumentalise the embryo and to desensitise the public to the moral issues by justifying the destruction of embryos in the name of medicine. Embryos are the start of human life; where else can it be said that an individual life begins other than conception? Secondly, it allows the progressive lobby to cast the debate in terms of objective science and anti-scientic religious opinion, as if this were Galileo Vs the Catholic Church all over again: many casual observers of current affairs will support this research because they are inundated with the avalanche of propaganda in favour of it: after all, who wouldn't want to cure degenerative disorders and advance medicine?; but there are many "informed" people who support this dubious research because it allows them to align themselves with the forces of "progress": to make a gesture of approval for Science and against what they see as Superstition. They are responding to the pressure of an ideology, not the scientific facts. Leaving aside the simplification of history that has led to the prevailing view of the Galileo story, it is in fact the religious view on embyronic stem cell research that has proved to be better science, as shown by the evidence on the success of adult stem cell treatments and the failure of embryo-based therapies, while the supposedly scientific view - that this research is justified by its results - is ideologically committed, not neutral at all.