Despite the fuss over the ad featuring actor Michael J. Fox, embryonic stem cell research is hardly a bellwether issue in the race for governor. For this Editorial Board, it's an easy call.
Gov. Jim Doyle and Wisconsin Green Party gubernatorial candidate Nelson Eisman have the right idea.
Doyle has embraced this research and done everything in his power to support it, committing millions of state dollars.
Republican Rep. Mark Green, on the other hand, has consistently voted with President Bush to continue the unreasonable restrictions the president imposed in 2001 on new federal funding for such research. Green has maintained that stance even while a growing number of fellow conservative Republicans have split with the president because they, like Doyle, appreciate the tremendous therapeutic possibilities of embryonic stem cells.
Why are there restrictions on new federal funding for EMBRYONIC stem cell research?
There are ethical considerations, considerations that even Bill Clinton acknowledged.
In March 1997, Bill Clinton called human cloning, Doyle's pet project, a "troubling prospect."
"Any discovery that touches upon human creation is not simply a matter of scientific inquiry," the president said Tuesday at a White House news conference to announce his decision. "It is matter of morality and spirituality as well."
Clinton also called on privately funded researchers to voluntarily implement a temporary moratorium on human cloning research "until our bioethics advisory committee and our entire nation has had time to... debate the ethical implications."
The success of Scottish scientists in cloning a sheep from an adult sheep -- and the subsequent announcement that Oregon scientists had successfully cloned monkeys from embryos -- prompted Clinton's decision.
No federal funds are currently being put toward human cloning experiments, but the president said he wanted to close possible loopholes in the present law by explicitly banning such funding.
..."There is much about cloning that we still do not know," he said.
The president said that he personally hoped the country would "respect this profound gift (life) and resist the temptation to replicate ourselves."
Obviously, Doyle and The Journal Sentinel Editorial Board do not share the concern that President Clinton harbored in 1997 about the morality and spirituality of playing with human embryos.
Green points out that he has no objections to private funding. But as one researcher put it, the private dollars available are "a drop in the bucket."
Now, why would the private dollars available be only "a drop in the bucket"?
Wouldn't private investors jump at the chance of making millions or billions of dollars in stem cell research, the new frontier for miracle cures?
Of course they would.
So why aren't the private dollars there?
It's not a wise investment.
At this point, EMBRYONIC stem cell research is problematic. It's been unsuccessful. The promise lies in adult stem cells and cord blood.
...Green fully supports adult stem cell research, which has delivered some therapeutic benefits. But embryonic cells hold more promise because they can become any tissue in the body.
Correction: Adult stem cell research has delivered the ONLY therapeutic benefits of any stem cell research.
In spite of the promised promise of EMBRYONIC stem cells, they have delivered no treatments or cures for illnesses. None.
He objects because the current research requires the destruction of the embryo. But because the embryos used are from fertility clinics and scheduled to be discarded anyway, that argument lacks credibility.
To the contrary, an argument should be made that those embryos scheduled to be tossed away like yesterday's trash should not be discarded.
A case should be made for the ethical handling of human life. Green is right to object to the destruction of the embryo.
The Journal Sentinel Editorial Board lacks moral grounding. Respect for life doesn't enter into the Board's arguments. They are shallow and uniformed and inhumane.
Green proposed using $25 million in state money to look for ways to extract stem cells without killing the embryos. But developments in this area have been called into question, and far more research is needed to know whether such procedures are viable.
Yes, and developments in EMBRYONIC stem cell research have been called into question.
For example:
--In animal studies, embryonic-stem-cell treatments have been found to cause tumors. In one mouse study involving an attempt to treat Parkinson's-type symptoms, more than 20 percent of the mice died from brain tumors — this despite researchers reducing the number of cells administered from the usual 100,000 to 1,000.
--Tissue rejection is another major hurdle to the use of embryonic stem cells in medical treatments. This is why ESCR is known as the gateway to human cloning, since one proposed way out of this potential dilemma is to create cloned embryos of patients being treated as a source of stem cells, a process known as "therapeutic cloning." Not coincidentally, many of the same proponents who are now urging increased funding for ESCR also advocate that we legalize and publicly fund therapeutic-cloning research, which many find immoral because it creates cloned human life for the sole purpose of experimentation and destruction.
Simply put, EMBRYONIC stem cells are currently not viable for treatment purposes.
Between the two major-party candidates, this issue has been muddied by rhetoric, but the bottom line couldn't be clearer: Doyle is right.
The stem cell research issue hasn't been muddied by rhetoric of the two-major party candidates.
It's been muddied by the liberals' dishonesty.
It's been muddied by lies -- from the likes of the Doyle camp, the Greater Wisconsin Committee, Michael J. Fox, and the intentionally deceptive Old Media.
The most productive research and beneficial results have come from adult stem cells.
The bottom line couldn't be clearer: Green is right.
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