We are talking about a blastocyst (a scientific term), which is as small as a grain of sand and cannot be seen without a microscope, as if it were already a human life. I am certain of one thing: I am a human life and I have been using a wheelchair for the past 22 years due to a spinal-cord injury. This research is promising and gives hope to those of us who have disabilities, illnesses or diseases.
Please contact your elected officials today.
DAVID ALLGOOD
Louisville 40214
Give us `false hope'
In your June 11 editorial, "Reagan's `Long Goodbye,'" you try to exploit the grieving public with false hope about the potential for stem cells to cure Alzheimer's disease. Researchers have apparently known for some time that embryonic stem cells will not be an effective treatment for Alzheimer's, because, as two researchers told a Senate subcommittee in May, it is a "whole brain disease," rather than a cellular disorder (such as Parkinson's).
Dr. Ronald D.G. McKay, a stem-cell researcher at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, recently explained to The Washington Post the reason scientists have allowed society to believe wrongly that stem cells are likely to effectively treat Alzheimer's disease. "People need a fairy tale," he stated. "Maybe that's unfair, but they need a story line that's relatively simple to understand."
Fetal-stem-cell-research advocates have allowed the grieving widow of former President Ronald Reagan to believe cruel untruths about the potential for stem cells to cure this terrible disease. These falsehoods help generate public support for the biotech political agenda.
The important decisions being made today by our leaders in the area of stem-cell research will have a significant impact upon the morality of the 21st Century. We are not being well served by scientists who think we "need a story line that's relatively simple to understand," nor by newspaper editorials that give us cruel fairy tales and false hope.
THOMAS A. MCADAM III
Louisville 40202
Source: The Courier-Journal
