Probably because her breast cancer has returned, Elizabeth Edwards is campaigning for the expansion of federal funding for embryonic stem cell research while also campaigning for her husband, Democrat presidential candidate John Edwards. It is generally expected that if you, or someone you love, has a disease or disability they must always be in favor of this research, and the high profile “sick people” or relatives of sick people have not failed to disappoint in this regard – Christopher and Dana Reeve, Michael J. Fox, Mary Tyler Moore, Nancy and Ron Reagan etc… This is largely due to the fact that our society cannot deal with physical suffering. Physical suffering, next to cigarette smoking, is seen as the greatest moral evil in the modern world and should be eradicated at all cost. Nancy Reagan, who I mentioned, finally could not bear watching the effects of President Reagan’s Alzheimer’s disease and when she felt that she could “no longer reach him” began advocating for embryo destructive research. This despite the fact that, I’m quite sure, her husband would probably have adamantly opposed such research. But his suffering was too much for her to bear and she decided that something must be done to stop it from happening to others in the future, even if that “something” requires the destruction of human life.

Elizabeth Edward’s arguments are the same arguments used over and over again – this is only research on a tiny clump of cells and the embryos are going to be discarded anyway, blah blah blah… It’s just sad because science and ethics are becoming less and less relevant in this debate (if it ever was relevant) and is being replaced by pure emotion. We need CURES, CURES, CURES! And nothing should stand in the way of finding these CURES!