oning to make embryo-like entities. By what standard do supporters of making disabled embryos or pulling a cell off of a specially created embryo find cloning to be less morally acceptable?
But there is an even bigger problem with this new push by some to find alternatives to embryonic stem-cell research. Must science proceed only if everyone in the nation agrees that the research is worth doing?
If so, no science will ever be conducted. We could never do research in evolutionary biology, since there are creationists who oppose it. We could not do research on cancer, mental illnesses or animals since each of these has its critics.
The idea that scientists should abandon embryonic stem-cell research while looking for alternatives that satisfy every critic and moral point of view is simply bad public policy.
The vast majority of Americans believes that embryonic stem-cell research should be conducted, and that embryos outside the body — which will not develop on their own and are routinely destroyed at infertility clinics — do not have the same moral status as fetuses or people and are therefore ethical sources of embryonic stem cells. There is a minority that vehemently disagrees.
But the debate has already been heard and it is time to proceed — not stall any longer, examining unproven strategies that quickly bog down in the same moral problems that have beset embryonic stem-cell research since it began.
Scientists should be clear about the principles that ought to govern research. Trying to appease a minority with scientific flimflammery, while delaying promising research that one day may lead to treatments that improve millions of lives is something that should not be done.
Ethics must guide science, but there are few ethical disputes that will yield to purely scientific fixes. Embryonic stem-cell research is not one of them.