Monday, June 07, 2004
Senators looking to ease ban on stem cell research
So these embryos are usually just thrown away anyways, why not use them to treat MS, help people get out of their wheelchairs.
Why waste it?
|
Fifty-eight senators are asking President Bush to relax federal restrictions on stem cell research, and several said Monday that the late President Reagan's Alzheimer's disease underscored a need to expand the research using human embryos.
The senators' letter to Bush was sent Friday, before Reagan died after a long struggle with Alzheimer's.
But Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said: "This issue is especially poignant given President Reagan's passing. Embryonic stem cell research might hold the key to a cure for Alzheimer's and other terrible diseases."
Last month, Nancy Reagan appeared at a fund-raising dinner in Los Angeles to promote stem cell research.
"We would very much like to work with you to modify the current embryonic stem cell policy so that it provides this area of research the greatest opportunity to lead to the treatments and cures for which we are all hoping," the senators wrote Bush.
The letter was signed by 43 Democrats, the Senate's one independent and 14 Republicans, among them conservatives who oppose abortion. In April, 206 House members sent a similar letter to Bush.
Stem cells typically are taken from days-old human embryos and then grown in a laboratory into lines or colonies. Because the embryos are destroyed when the cells are extracted, the process is opposed by some conservatives who link it to abortion.
So these embryos are usually just thrown away anyways, why not use them to treat MS, help people get out of their wheelchairs.
Why waste it?
|
