Jonathan Moreno gets it wrong on stem cells again

I’ll try to have more on this tomorrow but Jonathan Moreno and Rick Weiss have an editorial in the Boston Globe entitled "GOP wants to close stem cell lab doors. The editorial falsely claims the GOP’s platform calls for a “ban (on) all embryonic stem cell research.”

The platform does no such thing. It calls for the U.S. to ban "experimentation on human embryos for research purposes." This is much different than calling for a ban on any research using cells which were obtained from human embryos. There’s a difference between research on human embryos and research on human embryonic stem cells. The language of the GOP platform would ban the former but not affect research on embryonic stem cells which were previously extracted from human embryos. If the proposal were passed into law then federal law would mirror current Michigan law where research on human embryonic stem cells is legal but killing and non-therapeutic experimentation on human embryos is illegal.

Here’s a good rule of thumb: If Jonathan Moreno is making a claim with regards to stem cell research, the claim is most likely false.