Friday, December 16, 2005

Stem-cell deception

Today's news also exposed something of the underside of embryonic stem cell research. I thought it was bad enough when Korean scientists had stormed ahead and announced actually cloning human beings. Now, according to the Korean news site Digital Chosunibo, "a researcher on Hwang's team who took part in the somatic cloning of stem cells claimed the results published by Science in 2004 were a collection of falsehoods. The researcher maintains that Hwang's team fabricated data because in reality it failed to clone a somatic cell and instead used a frozen embryo from the hospital to make stem cells. The researcher says the team also lied about cloning a cow."
Well, in one way, that's good news for the uncloned humans. Except that they probably did destroy hundreds and hundreds of potentially viable embryos in their pursuit of the scientific grail of the day.
You gotta hope that these lies will lead to someone's awakening: why are we racing to do this (and lying about it) when real cures can be done with adult stem cells? Why insist on pursuing the elusive (at the price of one's own soul) and ignoring the available?

1 comment:

TT said...

Why insist on pursuing the elusive (at the price of one's own soul) and ignoring the available?

So true, thanks for sharing. It is a scary world that we are living in. Now more than ever we have to reaffirm human life in the way that God intended.