Romney and Stem Cells

Romney is taking heat from elite Harvard and Democrats for protecting from abuses in stem cell research. In a heavily slanted article by the Boston Globe Romney is critisized for introducing ethics into scientific research.

In an interview, Paul Cote , the state public health commissioner, acknowledged that the rules were developed in ``active dialogue" with Romney's office and that the Department of Public Health was told to close what Cote described as ``loopholes" that would allow embryos to be developed strictly for research. Romney supports research using embryos left over from in vitro fertilization but opposes the creation of cloned human embryos in order to harvest stem cells.

A fair position one would think, yet Harvard and other institutions want the ability to create life in order to destroy it.

But creating human embryonic stem cells using that technique [cloning embryos with the genes of a person with a particular disease they want to study], also called somatic cell nuclear transfer or SCNT, in humans is ``only an idea or an ideal at the moment," said Kevin Eggan, principal investigator at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute . And ``it may or may not ever become a reality."

Nevertheless, he said, ``It would be a shame to rule out any reasonable alternative" to SCNT

"Reasonable" is definitly a subjective term. Romney and other pro-lifers feel it's "reasonable" to avoid creating a human life in a lab with the intentions of destroying it.

It would also be "reasonable" to assume that if stem cell research, such as the one Harvard is defending, was a viable source of new information than private companies would be all over it hoping to get there piece of the pie. But they are not.