Scientists at Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) had indeed issued a press release claiming they could obtain stem cells by taking only one cell from an early 8-10 cell embryo, which, the release claimed, permitted the embryos to remain viable. (Conventional ESCR is conducted upon later-stage embryos at the 100-200 cell stage, which destroys the embryo.) But upon closer investigation, it Read More ›
This article, published by WorldNetDaily, quotes Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Wesley J. Smith: Bioethics specialist Wesley J. Smith, writing in Lifesite.com, expressed enthusiasm about the apparent breakthrough, but also urged caution. “We have to be cautious,” said Smith, a senior fellow at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute and a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture. “One patient does Read More ›
FORMER NEW YORK GOVERNOR Mario Cuomo is one slick fella. Like all effective propagandists, he’s smooth, articulate, eloquent—and he doesn’t let the facts get in his way. Take for example his most recent polemic in the debate over embryonic stem cell research (ESCR). In “Not on Faith Alone,” published in the June 20 New York Times (where else?), Cuomo takes Read More ›
IT NEVER FAILS. If an embryonic stem cell researcher issues a press release touting a purported research advance, the media trip over each other to give the story full dramatic fanfare. But if an even better adult or umbilical cord blood stem cell advance comes to light—even when the experiments involve humans—you can usually hear the crickets chirping. The latest examples Read More ›
“PEOPLE NEED A FAIRY TALE,” Ronald D.G. McKay, a stem cell researcher at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, told Washington Post reporter Rick Weiss, explaining why scientists have allowed society to believe wrongly that stem cells are likely to effectively treat Alzheimer’s disease. “Maybe that’s unfair, but they need a story line that’s relatively simple to understand.” Read More ›
Consumers Guide to aBrave New World,by Wesley J. Smith(Encounter, 219 pp., $25.95) Leo Strauss found it telling that Machiavelli mentioned only one other figure who served as the teacher of princes, the office that Machiavelli was claiming for himself. And that was Chiron the centaur, who was aptly constituted to be a tutor of princes because he was half man, Read More ›
IT IS BECOMING INCREASINGLY clear that the bio-anarchists leading the charge to Brave New World want a virtually unlimited license to engage in human cloning. The proof is in the legislation they keep trying to pass. It is bad enough that in Washington, senators Orin Hatch, Republican of Utah, and Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, have introduced the Human Cloning Read More ›
When President Bush selected bioethicist and author Leon R. Kass to head the President’s Council on Bioethics, many were outraged. Kass, a critic of human cloning, was accused of being a Luddite who would use his position to stack the council deck against “scientific progress.” But that is not how Kass viewed his mandate. He envisioned that the council would Read More ›
STEM CELLS are undifferentiated “master cells” in the body that can develop into differentiated tissues, such as bone, muscle, nerve, or skin. Stem cell research may lead to exponential improvements in the treatment of many terminal and debilitating conditions, from cancer to Parkinson’s to Alzheimer’s to diabetes to heart disease. Indeed, break-throughs in stem cell research reported just in the Read More ›