In California they’re getting a “reality check” after the passage of Prop. 71, which owes its victory to proponents who, much like they did in MO, carted out sick babies and people in wheelchairs with doctors claiming that ESC research is their only hope for cures. The subheadline to a recent LA Times article says it all: “The research, stalled by legal challenges, offers no guarantees of cures, California institute scientists say as they outline more modest goals.” That research, as I have just said, is human ESC research, which requires the destruction of embryonic human life. In 2004 Californians voted to spend $3 billion to fund ESC research with the idea that this would give researchers the tools they needed to find cures for almost every disease known to man. Now researchers are saying:

“It is unlikely that [the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine] will be able to fully develop stem cell therapy for routine clinical use during the 10 years of the plan.”

Instead, the top goal is to establish, in principle, that a therapy developed from human embryonic stem cells can “restore function for at least one disease.”

This is not what Californians were promised. They were promised cures for Spinal Cord Injury, Parkinson’s Disease, Diabetes, Multiple Sclerosis – you name the disease and ESC research was the answer. Unfortunately science and medicine has become just another political machine. “[T]outing dramatic cures in exchange for research dollars has become “the American way” of doing medical research, said Robert Blendon, professor of health policy and management at the Harvard School of Public Health.” Meanwhile individuals who suffer terrible diseases and disabilities are being used and exploited and the lives of our embryonic brothers and sisters destroyed.