Invaluable Embryonic Stem Cells Research

Embryonic Stem Cell (ESCs) Research is back in the news again. Unfortunately, it is under the political and religious pressure. ESC is moving at a slower pace at the expense of, as stated by the White House, "millions of people who suffer from life destroying diseases." Unlike abortion, the purpose of ESC research is to cure potential diseases and disabilities such as Parkinson's disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's, stroke, and spinal cord injuries.

Despite its good intentions, ESC research was considered manipulation and destruction of a life form; as Pope John Paul II clearly stated, "embryonic research is morally unacceptable."
This ongoing debate is one of the most controversial topics does not seem to be ending any time soon, but time is running out for those suffering from the diseases. While some are lying in bed, others are in wheelchairs waiting in hope that one day they will have a chance to live their lives with more certainty. To them, ESC research is a possible hope, and hope is sometimes all expecting patients have.

The Invaluable Embryo
There are various ways to obtain stem cells: blood cells (extracted from the umbilical cord blood, after a baby is born), bone marrow donation (from existing human beings), and the ESCs from the fertility clinics. Among those, ESC is the most questionable and objectionable by various parties because of ethic issues involved.

Is Embryo A Life Form?
It is not the advance technology that has made ESC research controversial, but because we each hold different value systems. These belief systems then transcend into measuring sticks -- either visible or invisible ones.

Conflicts arise when two people interact with each other trying to measure up with their own sets of measuring sticks. Often times, we impose our views towards counterparts and fail to look at issues from a larger standpoint. Physicians, for example, had to adopt the Catholic Church's view on life. According to Richard Doerflinger, the Deputy Directory of the Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, physicians are bond by the code of ethic stated in the "Declaration of Geneva," practicing physicians had to swear "I will maintain the utmost respect for human life, from the time of conception" and "No experiment should be conducted where there is a prior reason to believe that death or disabling injury will occur