Obama's Stem Cell Error

Not unexpectedly, but tragically, Obama will reverse President Bush's policies on restricting research on embryonic stem sells. Claiming this restores science and separates science from politics, Obama declares open season on human beings at their earliest stages. He treat human beings as means to be experimented upon (and, of course, killed) for sake of merely possible medical benefit. This is deeply immoral. Experimentation on nonembryonic stem cells is another matter, since no embryo is destroyed in the processes. Morever, this has been shown to have promise medically.

Morever, Obama is not restoring sound science or separating politics from science. He is violating a deep moral principle through federal (political) policy. He is using his political power to empower technologies that harm (in fact, kill) human beings. One should protect the most vulnerable among us. One should not treat human beings--at any stage or in any form--as mere material to be exploited for the potential benefit of other more powerful human beings. Sound science tells us that a human person begins at conception. Moral principle tells us to put the burden of proof on anyone for any reason who would kill this human being.

For a detailed philosophical development of the status and rights of the human embryo, see Embryo: A Defense of Human Life by Robert George and Christopher Tollefsen.