SPEAKING OUT

Why Can't This Nation Back Stem Cell Research?

Would a parent deny their ill child embryonic stem cell therapy that could restore their child's health or save their child's life? To deny a crippled child good health, to deny a dying child life--would this not be a crime, here on earth and in heaven? Most parents will welcome this therapy.

Ask someone afflicted with Parkinson's or Lou Gehrig's disease: if embryonic stem cell therapy could restore your health, would you refuse this treatment? Most will want the therapy, wanting to live a healthy life, here on earth.

Caring people must be allowed to donate an egg cell, fertilized in a petri dish, leading to restoring a loved one's health or saving a loved one's life.

Life is given and taken at all stages of life, be it in war, for religion, in vitro fertilization, in an accident or for countless other causes or reasons. Hopefully, most lives are lived, and given and taken, for the betterment of mankind. And one person's beliefs must not be to the determent of another's well-being.

George Bush has stated that he is for "protecting life, at all stages." Yet though he ships men and women, in the full bloom of their lives, to die and be maimed in an unnecessary war in Iraq, he is not supportive of research in the war of ridding the world of terrible diseases.

Treatments cannot be developed without first doing the research. No one is that naïve that this miracle, this scientific breakthrough, is "around the corner," but we must have hope. We must develop cutting-edge regenerative and reparative medicines. And it would be better that a scientific breakthrough, a miracle, happen here first and not in China! God gave us a brain--let's use it to make everyone's lives better.

George Bush has been and will continue to be an obstacle to hope for a scientific breakthrough, a miracle.

Voting for Bush, hope is not around the corner. Voters should vote for hope, and for their health, and vote for John Kerry.