Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Life Links 11/27/07

Clark Forsythe and Denise Burke on state human life amendments aren't the best way to challenge Roe v. Wade and other potential problems with state HLAs.
In the abstract, a state HLA is very appealing. Protecting human life is a fundamental principle and protecting it in the federal or a state constitution seems like an essential goal. If a constitution protects essential rights, the right to life should be part of that. But human lives are protected not by abstractions but by effective laws.


Rich Lowry on the recent stem cell news:
Their muted reaction to the latest development suggests that for some of them what was so exciting about stem-cell research wasn't the far-off potential therapeutic applications, but the chance to portray pro-lifers as standing in the way of life-enhancing scientific discoveries.


For some reason Mike King of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution thinks the discovery of scientists being able to get pluripotent stem cells by reprogramming adult cells should lead the federal government to expand the funding of embryonic stem cell research not just to lines created after August of 2001 but to funding of the process of destroying human embryos for their stem cells.


The New York Times has an interesting article on what happens now in stem cell research. I can't recall the Times being so forthright before about the numerous practical problems with using pluripotent stem cells to create cells which might be useful in therapy.

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