GMHS Lasso Online Commentary

Of all of the ongoing debates in our society, stem-cell research is one of the newest that pits science versus religion.

Scientific progress has always been blocked by something or other. Copernicus was prosecuted because he said that the earth revolved around the sun, as opposed to the other way around. Darwin’s Theory of Evolution was (and continues to be) challenged many times as well. Now, in 2005, stem-cell research has to run the gauntlet, and it’s sure to be paddled from both sides before it comes out.

What say we forget religious morality and focus on progress? Instead of preventing this medical miracle on a religious basis, we should go ahead and use it to mankind’s benefit. Stem-cell research could cure blind, deaf, and dumb people; it could repair the shattered bodies of quadriplegics and give the lame the ability to walk again.

Now, I’m sure some skeptics are saying that stem-cell research might cure these illnesses (as in it is possible for stem-cell research to do so, but it hasn’t been proven), but for your information, it already has. On October 12, 2004, stem cells from umbilical cord blood were transplanted into paraplegic Hwang Mi-Soon’s spinal cord. Three weeks later, at a press conference, Chosun University professor Song Chang-Hun announced that Hwang Mi-Soon, who had been paralyzed for 19 years, got up from her wheelchair and walked with the aid of a walking frame. 19 years. I can’t even wait for the weekend!

The common misperception about stem-cell research is where the fetuses come from. The scientists are not going to be aborting fetuses for stem-cell research, but they will merely be using already aborted fetuses, which, if not given to stem-cell research, would end up in a Biohazard garbage bin somewhere. If the mother wants to abort the fetus, all the scientists want to do is use it for stem-cell research after it has been aborted. I ask you, as an intelligent human being, what’s wrong with that?

However, a 2001 executive order “restricting federal funding for stem cell research to only those batches of [existing] cells” is a legally insurmountable barrier. And what, pray tell, has happened to those existing batches of cells? The entire stock has been contaminated by a “non-human molecule,” making them completely useless. If more people like Hwang Mi-Soon are to be cured, we have to override the executive order and legalize extraction of stem cells.