by Rusty Pugh and Bill Fancher
(AgapePress) – With the news this week that scientists in Virginia have created human embryos for the purpose of research, a pro-life advocate is saying, “We told you so.”
Scientists at the Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine in Norfolk, Virginia, announced this week that they had mixed donated eggs and sperm to create a human embryo for the specific purpose of medical research. National Right to Life spokeswoman Laura Echevarria says it is reprehensible, but not surprising.
“Our opponents have been saying, ‘Well, we’re only going to use spare embryos — ones that will be discarded anyway,’” she says. “We’ve been opposing that and we’ve been saying if you let down the floodgates, then the next step is creating embryos and we will have people creating embryos specifically for their destruction.”
“This just proves our point. This is exactly what happened to our knowledge and to the knowledge of the medical community. This is the first time embryos were created specifically for their destruction,” she reiterates.
Echevarria says this will have ethical and moral ramifications, “certainly the least of which is in essence we are almost cannibalizing our young in order to promote what is now a pipe dream,” she says. “Many people out there are under the impression that stem cells can only be retrieved through embryos, and that’s not true.”
Dr. David Stevens of the Christian Medical and Dental Society says stem cell research holds much promise, but he says our direction has been wrong. “I think the embryonic stem cells have potential, but the best studies that have been done, the ones that show the greatest promise, are using adult stem cells,” he says.
Dr. Stevens says if embryonic research opens the doors to new therapies there will be many people who cannot ethically accept that therapy since a human being died in obtaining it. He says many people who have based their reputation on embryonic stem cell research are fighting to keep it going, along with federal grants.
(This update courtesy of Agape Press.)
