Word: stemming
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Cultural and religious fault lines have opened up around issues like stem - cell research, therapeutic cloning, assisted reproduction and euthanasia, but gay rights is perhaps the most divisive. In Spain, whose kings and queens were once the most fervent defenders of the Christian faith, the Socialist government has launched a radical reform of family law that will grant gays and lesbians full legal status as parents and allow them to marry. In Ireland, another former Roman Catholic bastion, politicians from all parties meet this week to discuss whether the constitution should be changed to give homosexual couples the same rights...
...Stem cell research using existing embryos is already an extremely contentious issue nationally. Linking stem cell research to abortion, President George W. Bush has banned federal funds from supporting the production of more usable stem cell lines—the collections of undifferentiated cells that are so valuable to stem cell researchers. This frustratingly provincial attitude to what could be the next great tool in modern medicine has frozen this avenue of scientific inquiry within the United States...
Harvard, however, has begun to defend stem cell research against the frustrating restrictions Bush has placed on it. Researchers at the institute have already created new, viable stem cell lines using private money. But cloning human embryos for the purpose of stem cell research is even more controversial than just producing more stem cell lines from existing embryos. Cloning conjures up images of Dolly, the cloned sheep, and seems to raise a cornucopia of ethical dilemmas...
...what Harvard’s stem cell scientists are asking to do is not as ethically daunting as popular imagination might make it. Harvard has already banned reproductive cloning—the sort of thing that results in Dolly. That is not what the Stem Cell Institute has in mind. As Executive Director Charles G. Jennings told The Crimson, “We have no idea whether [reproductive cloning] would work in humans—it would be grossly irresponsible to try, and we’re completely opposed to it.” Rather, institute researchers want to extract...
...Harvard is to continue to lead the way in stem cell research in the United States, it must allow its researchers to do the kind of work that continues apace in other countries. A South Korean lab has already extracted new stem cell lines from a cloned embryo. A lab in Britain plans to do the same soon. America could fall very far behind indeed if even the private organizations that can afford to conduct stem cell research fall short...