For years we have been told that embryonic stem cells are the greatest and even the only hope we have of curing every disease and disability known to man. This promise, propagated by the biotech industry, has lead states to pour literally billions of taxpayer dollars into the unethical research and caused voters in Missouri to grant scientists a constitutional right to clone and kill embryos. But now some scientists are finally admitting what we’ve been saying all along:
STEM cell research, we have long been told, should pave the way for revolutionary new treatments to help millions of patients around the world.
Yet despite the years of study and debate about the potential, therapies have been slow to materialise…Lord Patel of Dunkeld, chairman of the UK National Stem Cell Network and chancellor of Dundee University, said the current signs were that research involving stem cells would lead to therapies for patients.
But he said there was also a chance such treatments could prove too risky for human use.
Speaking to The Scotsman, Lord Patel said it could be five to ten years before stem cell treatments were widely available, with trials starting shortly in the UK and US.
“But we have to be cautious,” he said. “It may not deliver therapy for anything. We may find that stem therapy is quite a risky business.
Risky indeed. ESCs have a 20-plus history of producing tumors after implantation in animals and things haven’t improved much. Despite this there are some who would still like to pursue human trials using these “risky” stem cells and the FDA is holding its first public hearing to assess the safety of such therapies. I can tell you one thing, even if I didn’t oppose the way in which these stem cells are derived, I wouldn’t risk cancer just so that I could walk again.
The worst part about the entire ESCR charade is that human embryos are now seen as nothing more than a commodity and people suffering from terrible afflictions have been manipulated by the biotech industry for financial and political gain.
See the benefits of adult stem cells. And check out Where’s the Beef?
Others posting:
Driving Out the Snakes
Wesley Smith
Life News
My other posts:
“Cloning Benefits Oversold”
Goodbye Dolly
Actor Charlton Heston died Sunday at the age of 84. He portrayed many great historical figures throughout his film career including 
As today is the anniversary of the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. be sure to read Mark Pickup’s post (written on MLK day) about the late activist and the continuation of his fight for the rights of all human beings.
who campaigned for the end of the transatlantic slave trade in 1807 – paving the way for the abolition of all slavery in the British Empire – recently wrote an article regarding the UK’s 
The late great John Paul II passed away three years ago today. My family and I were very fortunate to have the chance to greet the late pontiff in Feb. of 2001. Once we found out that handicapped people, people in wheelchairs, automatically get to go up and greet the pope after his general audience we couldn’t get to Rome fast enough. My middle sister and I were able to greet him after the Wednesday audience on Feb. 14 and a few days later the rest of my family, my parents and my younger sister, received a special invitation, at the request of a dear priest friend of ours, to greet him with a group of people after his daily Mass (I will post all of their pictures below).
the requirement to show reverence and love for every person and the life of every person.” This is not only true for weakest and most innocent members of our society – the poor, the sick, the unborn, the elderly, the embryo in a petri dish – but it includes loving the life of a criminal, of our enemies (
has a great disdain for human suffering which leads to the tragic death and outright murder of people whose lives are considered worthless. We can counter this by following the example of JPII whose physical health gradually deteriorated after the gun shot wound that almost took his life. Despite the obvious pain and suffering that came with his sickness, the pope never let it slow him down. Even in his final days, when his health was at its worst, he struggled to be in front of the faithful. In 1984 he also wrote the Apostolic Letter on the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering, 
Yesterday marked the third anniversary of the day Terri Schiavo was starved to death for having a life not worthy of living. I was pretty devastated that things turned out the way they did, but the whole thing gave me a renewed zeal – especially as a disabled person – to continue to make the most of my life and to show others that all life, even a life of suffering, is worth living. 
Sadly I think that it may not have had the same effect on others who may not have seen the starvation and dehydration of an innocent young woman, but only an ugly battle between family members over the treatment of their wife, daughter and sister. In the wake of Terri’s death I heard many people say that they want to make it perfectly clear their intention to have their own feeding tube removed if they were ever in the same situation in order to avoid the conflict that erupted between the Schindler/Schiavo families. And because they would not want to be a burden on their families. This is the anti-life mentality of our culture, it is better to be dead than to live a life of hardship and suffering and it is better to bury a family member than to take the time to love and care for them. 
Terri Schiavo was not in a coma and was not in a brain dead or “persistent vegetative state”. Terri was a severely handicapped young woman who suffered a life altering, not life ending, brain injury. Because of that many in our society, including her husband, concluded that Terri’s life was no longer worthy of being lived, though she was, in fact, “living”. This is the sentiment that is behind the push for euthanasia and the abortion of “unhealthy” unborn children. Believe it or not, this tends to be the mentality of those who advocate the destruction of embryos for scientific research in order to find a cure at all cost – the idea that the handicapped, like myself, are somehow incomplete because of their various physical or mental limitations and that only a scientific cure can give them any hope for a happy, normal life. Disabled people themselves buy into this, lending their voices and faces to the hyper sensationalized campaigns for this life destroying research, fueling the belief that our lives are lacking in quality.
I think that the best way we can learn from this tragedy and truly honor the memory of Terri Schiavo is to love the life that God has given to us, to keep living it despite the many setbacks and sufferings we endure – and to care for and 
Today we celebrate the