Subscribe
E-mail
Posts
Comments

When last year’s stem cell bill was passed the public was told the new law would ban human cloning. The title of the law even said so. But that title was false:

Scientists at Harvard University will join the international race to become the first to clone human embryos and obtain stem cells they say have the potential to unlock the secrets of mankind’s most intransigent diseases, the university announced Tuesday…

The privately financed research effort vaults Harvard into a global competition involving several institutions, including the University of Connecticut, to become the first to clone human embryos…

Scientists in the United Kingdom and at the University of California, San Francisco have announced similar intentions, as has Xiangzhong “Jerry” Yang, an animal cloning expert and director of the Center for Regenerative Biology at UConn in Storrs…

Yang on Friday notified Connecticut officials of his intent to apply for money under the state’s stem cell initiative to pursue cloning research at UConn, although he has not yet released details of his proposal or received approval from the university ethics committee to conduct the research.

The committee overseeing the disbursement of funds has already said that preference will be given to embryonic stem cell research (ESCR). Another unspoken preference was revealed in a related article:

More than 70 Connecticut scientists plan to ask for more than $60 million to study stem cells, a committee charged with divvying up grant money was told Tuesday…

The state has allocated only $20 million for funding this year…

The stem cell committee, however, still has several key issues to resolve. For instance, Yale University and the University of Connecticut have collectively applied for $12.5 million to build three facilities that would enable their researchers to study new lines of human embryonic stem cells…

If all three facilities were funded, that would leave less than $8 million for actual research.

CURE, the main lobbying force behind the clone and kill bill, is a group designed to promote economic development, not sound science. “It’s about bricks and mortar,” their lobbyist testified last year. The excerpt above proves him right. And the $8 million left over after the “bricks and mortar” are paid for would most likely go to the least promising research, ESCR, rather than the adult stem cells that have shown so much promise and do not involve the taking of human life.

“It’s about bricks and mortar.” And it’s about using your tax dollars to fund results-challenged, ethics-challenged research.

Leave a Reply