Embryonic Stem Cell Research

It is widely anticipated that President Obama will reverse President Bush’s executive order that limited taxpayer funding on embryonic stem cell research. For those that do not know what this is, this is taking an embryo that is a few days old and extracting the basic building blocks of human life. The process destroys the embryo, but the hope is that the knowledge gained from the research will save many more lives in the future.

Without going into the debate on ethics of this research, I want to discuss the spending of taxpayers funding on medical research. There is no doubt that putting more funding towards medical research is a good thing. Some of these breakthroughs came with federal funding, but many came from private funding. When President Bush used the executive order to bar further funding into new embryonic stem cell lines, he did not stop the research into the particular field of medicine, nor did he cut off all federal funding. All he did was stopped funding further research with taxpayer funds (he did increase funding in non-embryonic stem cell research though).

This action has often been called an assault to science. To me, it is called using taxpayers funds wisely. There is enough private funding in the field at the moment that government funding isn’t necessary. Additionally, there is no law requiring the government to fund any research. If Bush had banned the research all together, then there would be grounds for protest by the medical community, but this wasn’t the case. If Bush banned all federal funding into the field of research, there would definitely be complaining, but the research would still be allowed to continue (with private funding).

Stepping back in time to 2001, I think the medical community, plus any other special interest group out there, should recognize that there are many sources of funding (both private and public) available for stem cell research as a whole. If the federal government were willing to increase funding on one segment of research and restrict funding on another, the logical course of action would be the reallocation of resources. Shift private funding to embryonic stem cell research and apply for public funding on adult and cord blood stem cell research. You would still see an increase in funding without picking a fight with the government and creating partisan divide (and confusion).

I hope that President Obama will understand, especially in this current economic environment that taxpayer funds are not to be used by the federal government on any/all projects that pop up. The private sector raises large sums of funds each year for medical research. With private funds, the medical firms and companies are able to conduct research into a wider field of medicine than what they could do with public funds. Let the private sector tackle embryonic stem cell research. If it holds the potential that many in the medical lobbyist community states, companies will invest their research funds into this field of medicine in the hopes for a large return on investment later on.

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