To the editor:

The question of stem cell research is a momentous debate unfolding in the United States. Its outcome will shape the progress of humanity for eternity.

It’s been four years since our president announced the current policy on stem cell research. Federal funding will only be awarded to those researchers who use existing stem cell lines, gathered before August 2001, that meet a very narrow criteria. Over the past few years the availability of these stem cell lines has become an issue that has severely dampened researchers’ ability to complete their work. In essence, the government has the field of stem cell research in a tight asphyxiating grip leaving little room for anything except tiny gasps of air.

What is providing the muscle for the government’s tight grip? We are currently suffering through a time of a great moral crusade in which many aspects of our lives, and others, are being judged through the opaque glasses of religion. If we would have judged the research of the past 100 years with the same overzealous criticism of our day we would all be at an extreme loss.

Our current knowledge, drugs and immunizations that fight disease are the byproduct of genetic manipulation of non-human and human DNA in such a way that we alter “God’s plan” for that organism. Now would you being willing to give up our day’s health care because of our parents’ overzealous criticism of their day’s research? Or are you willing to take away from our children the tools of health care for the future?

Randall Logan,

Lawrence