I am disappointed with President Obama’s decision to rescind the Bush administration’s strict limits on human embryonic stem-cell research.

Obama confuses scientific integrity with Frankenstein science. Human welfare does not demand that scientists pursue every avenue available. On the contrary, it depends upon a shared responsibility that involves moral limits.

Science has confirmed with objective certainty that full human life begins at conception with the formation of a genetically complete, self-directing human entity, the embryo. Life does not result from an organism when it has been built up, but rather it is the vital principle of life that builds up the organism of its own body. This was established 120 years ago by Wilhelm His, the father of human embryology.

From this starting point, the human life history unfolds as a continuum – embryo-foetus-baby-child-adult-elderly person – and ending in death. Each point on the continuum is fully human with the full human properties appropriate to its stage of development. Embryonic stem-cell research involves the destruction of living human embryos. This amount to the direct and intentional killing of human beings.

Amazingly, though embryonic stem cell experiments have failed to produce a single, unqualified, therapeutic success, even in animal models, supporters of the embryonic model continue to laud their unproven and currently unethical methods and ignore the fact that adult stem cell therapies are being used extensively today in treating over seventy diseases. A major breakthrough in November of 2007 showed that pluripotent stem cells (embryo-like stem cells) can ethically be derived from human skin cells, by “reprogramming” them with special genes.

The smart plan for the US and Canada’s future would be to encourage the myriad of available alternatives, rather than funding the most unethical type of research that relies on a form of discrimination against an entire class of humans – embryonic humans – being singled out for targeted destruction at the hands of researchers.

Human beings are not raw materials that can be exploited or commodities that can be bought and sold. We must help those who are suffering, but we may not use a good end to justify an evil means.

Paul Kokoski

Hamilton, Ontario

Canada