The Christian Agenda Is Hindering Medical Progress In America

The recent news that two South Korean researchers, Dr. Woo Suk Hwang and Dr. Shin Yong Moon of Soul National University, have created human embryos through cloning and successfully extracted embryonic stem cells, sent shock waves through the world scientific community.

The work is especially exciting news for people suffering from genetic defects that threaten their life span or rob their quality of life. It also gives hope to paraplegics like actor Christopher Reeve, the thousands of people like my wife who battle mysterious nervous system crippling diseases like multiple sclerosis, and the millions of people facing premature death because of failing hearts, lungs, kidneys and other vital organs.

This is the news that patients with diseases like Parkinson's and diabetes have been waiting for. It means that now, for the first time, doctors can seriously consider therapeutic cloning of human body parts as a solution to a medical problem.

Instead of using harsh medicines that stop pain or slow the progress of disease but damage other vital body parts, doctors can consider cloning a patient's cells to make embryonic stem cells that are an exact genetic match of the patient.

Instead of struggling to get the human body to accept donated body parts doctors can opt to generate replacement tissue to treat or cure disease without provoking rejection from the body's immune system.

The goal of human cloning, the South Korean research team says, is to advance understanding of the causes and treatment of disease.

This is, indeed, a landmark moment in medical history. The question we should all be asking, however, is why did it happen in South Korea?  Why weren't doctors in some prestigious medical facility in the United States leading the way in this research?

The answer is . . . they were. The only problem is that human stem cell research of this nature has been prohibited in the United States by the angelic-driven Christian oriented Bush Administration.

The Christian fear is that a doctor Frankenstein will rise up somewhere and use the technique to clone a human baby. Indeed, the idea has already been talked about, and some people have claimed to have already attempted this kind of experiment, although the proof has yet to be shown.

Every great scientific discovery always has a dark side. There is an issue of ethics that arises in every thing we do. But the Christian agenda in the United States has carried this matter to the point of ridiculous foolishness.

The research on the cloning of human stem cells, and money for this research, moved overseas after Congress approved bills in early 2003 banning all human cloning experiments. The bright note is that the Senate refused to approve these bills, and the debate has continued to rage on the hill.

Now that the blueprint for human cloning has been established, America's Christian leadership is starting to get frantic about putting the brakes on this kind of research.

Dr. Leon Kass, chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics, has called for federal legislation "to stop human cloning for any purpose."

"The age of human cloning has apparently arrived," Kass said. "Today, cloned blastocysts for research; tomorrow cloned blastocysts for baby making. In my opinion, and that of the majority of the council, the only way to prevent this from happening here is for Congress to enact a comprehensive ban or moratorium on all human cloning."

Richard M. Doerflinger, deputy director for pro-life activities at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, also has chimed into this debate. Of course the Catholic church perceives a tiny piece of living human tissue as human life.

"This is a move toward creating new human lives solely to destroy them in research," Doerflinger said.

I say let the foolish Christians twist and writhe in the muck of their own making. They seem to think suffering is a good thing for the human race. So let them suffer.

They apparently are not stopping scientists in the non-Christian world from forging ahead with this important medical research. If they are smart, the people with money in the United States are helping to finance this work.

I can perceive a day in the near future when my wife and I will want to change our citizenship to another country. There we can utilize these amazing discoveries to build ourselves new body parts and consider hanging around another hundred years or so.