Can't Stop. Won't Stop. Eh-Eh, Eh-Eh.

The Christian Coalition is urging the Senate to delay vote on the Castle-DeGette bill (H.R.810) in light of promising new advances with umbilical cord blood. These advances, they say, could eliminate the unethical killing of human embryos for scientific gains.

Here we go . . .

I’m not going to get into a discussion of right and wrong. I’m not going to claim that I know when human life begins, whether or not an embryo constitutes a life form, if there is a point at which the loss of human life is acceptable and if so where that point might exist.

However!

The Bush administration and its base have, in the past five years, completely railroaded the scientific community, questioned evidence regardless of its incontrovertibility, and have proposed educating American children with an unscientific “science” known as Intelligent Design. They have ignored the warnings of climate change scientists, going as far as to try and discredit their evidence (for more on this, check out House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton’s witch hunt of Dr. Michael Mann’s work). They have waged war on science from the beginning, blocking roads leading to scientific advancement via restrictive legislation and a lack of funding. As a result, the American biotechnology industry is beginning to lag behind China and Korea (among others). It won’t be long before the gap becomes too wide to close.

The Coalition’s argument is that if we explore this particular path, favoring cord blood rather than stem cell research, other paths need not be tread. This argument goes against the spirit of scientific research and exploration. Regardless of cord blood’s abilities to allay human ailments, stem cells have their own properties, their own potential. To ignore this potential is to ignore the pursuit of knowledge. On future missions to space, will we explore some far off worlds while ignoring others? When searching the Amazon for exotic plants that may hold the cure to our most unthinkable diseases, do we favor some flora over others? Was Galileo satisfied after discovering four small bodies in orbit around Jupiter? No. He went on to prove Copernicanism against the religious doctrine of the time. Was Newton satisfied when he discovered that white light was not an entity of itself, as every scientist since Aristotle had believed, but a mixture of different rays refracted at slightly different angles? No. He went on to discover and develop the laws of gravity.

Stopping at cord blood won’t happen. Bioengineers in other countries are already discovering the potential of embryonic stem cells. It’s only a matter of time before a geneticist from China begins to unlock the secrets of Multiple Sclerosis, Cystic Fibrosis, Type I Diabetes; only a matter of time before Korean scientists cure cancer; only a matter of years before India wipes out HIV and AIDS. How embarrassing will that be? We are the richest, most powerful, and most influential nation in the world; as such we should be at the forefront of scientific discovery. American scientific innovation has already suffered a decline. Allowing it to slip further into the depths would be a ghastly mistake.

Scientists are never satisfied with the knowledge they have. And make no mistake; scientists don’t go into their chosen field looking for fame and fortune; the search for scientific knowledge is a quest to elevate the status quo, to improve the common good. The formal title of the Castle-DeGette bill is, “To amend the Public Health Service Act to Provide for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research.” Scientists using federal funds to research the potential of embryonic stem cells would do just that, service public health, public well-being. We would be downright lucky if our president would deign to do the same.