Live Patients & Dead Mice - Christianity Today Magazine

That's the verdict from David A. Prentice, MD, adjunct professor at Georgetown University Medical School and consultant to the President's Council on Bioethics. In short, this man knows what he's talking about.

The subject is stem-cell research, and specifically a direct comparison between embryonic and adult stem cells. Here is the score:

• Number of diseases treatable with adult stem cells: 65.
• Number of diseases treatable with embryonic stem cells: zero.

You at the Christopher Reeve Foundation, I hope you caught this. Adult stem cells are far and away ahead of embryonic stem cells--which haven't even gotten out of the gate--in the actual healing of real patients. Dr. Prentice also addresses the old chestnut that only embryonic stem cells are pluripotent--able to change into any kind of tissue you want. Not true. Adult stem cells from a wide variety of tissues are just as changeable as are embryonic stem cells. And they are easier to control. All that embryonic stem cells have done is produce choristomas (tissue growing outside of its normal place) or worse, carcinomas and sarcomas (malignant tumors) in rats and mice. I don't know about you, but I would never accept embryonic stem cells in any attempt to heal me of any particular ailment!

Why should we talk about this now? Because certain people want unlimited federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, that's why. To begin with, no Constitutional warrant exists for this kind of research. Furthermore, you're talking about killing some people to save others. And finally, embryonic stem cells are worthless! We have given them a chance, and they have failed--failed absolutely, in that we have no therapies from them, and failed competitively, because adult stem cells beat them to the punch years ago.

Only one reason remains for supporting embryonic stem cell research, and that is this: some people don't want to recognize a child as a person until the mother brings him or her home. Follow the link--a United States Senator actually said that. That is what this argument is all about.