Even though President Obama’s election was hailed by people everywhere as a victory against discrimination, Fr. Tadeusz Pacholczyk Education Director for the National Catholic Bioethics Center observes that if Obama funds research on embryos, he'll be subjecting them to discrimination.
“The smart plan for our country's future would be to encourage the myriad of available alternatives, rather than funding the most unethical type of research that relies on a form of discrimination against an entire class of humans - embryonic humans - being singled out for targeted destruction at the hands of researchers,” he told CNA.
According to a 2006 poll commissioned by "Research America," an organization dedicated to promoting ESCR among the U.S. public, with an emphasis on dismissing religious objection to the practice, claims that 58% of Americans favor the use of embryonic stem cells in medical research; with only 34% "strongly" supporting it and another 24% “somewhat" in favor. Twenty nine percent are opposed to ESCR, and 13% say that they don’t know what it is.
The same poll showed that of those opposed to ESCR, 57% say they have religious objections to it, while 39% say they object to the research on grounds other than religion.
Ryan T. Anderson, assistant director of the Program on Bioethics and Human Dignity at the Witherspoon Institute of Princeton, N.J., explained to First Things that because of the technical challenges and scientific hurdles ESCR therapies face, "there are no human embryonic stem-cell therapies even in clinical trial, let alone ready for therapy, and there have been no major treatment models in animals, either."
