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President Obama Lifts Stem Cell Funding Ban

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Today, the Lance Armstrong Foundation (LAF) released the following statement from President and CEO Doug Ulman, a three time cancer survivor, regarding President Barack Obama?s executive order lifting the Bush administration?s restrictions on federally financed human embryonic stem cell research:

?President Obama has made good on his pledge to separate science from politics and lift the federal restrictions on embryonic stem cell research.  This is a day the American cancer community has been waiting for and we?re celebrating the great news. Stem cell research holds great promise and with cancer soon to be the leading cause of death worldwide, we can leave no stone unturned in the search for groundbreaking new treatments and cures.?

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  • Aaron

    This is great. Now we can move forward with the research that will hopefully bring cures to things such as epilepsy and other diseases that hurt so many people. I hope that this will be a positive move and not be seen by many as a bad thing, I truly believe that this is positive.

  • http://StupidCancer.com Matthew Zachary

    It’s about damned time.

  • http://www.thetraveltart.com Anthony

    Fantastic! This is not just momentous for the US – but has implications for the world, since the US has so much clout! This is just the first step.

  • https://www.kintera.org/faf/donorReg/donorPledge.asp?ievent=259771&supid=208897875 Jade

    Hallelujah!!!! A Politician who puts money where his mouth is. It is possible that there will be cures for so very many terminal illnesses in our lifetime now.
    Thank you Mr. President!

  • mike powell

    Great. Now we justify the ends by the means. Human life is now disposable for spare parts. Shame on us. any comments…michaelgpowell@yahoo.com

  • http://www.rootsrain.com Jeff

    I’m actually very saddened by the news. The choice to use embryonic stems cells (rather than, say breast milk stem cells or cord blood stems cells) is not a choice of science over politics. The ban was never about politics but about the preciousness of human life. Obama has seen fit to preference the hope of medical treatment over the actuality that millions of unborn children will be killed. This isn’t politics or science. It’s morality. It’s a very similar ethical situation to Nazi scientists experimenting on Jews (using people they didn’t think were worthy of life and protection for the advancement of science).

  • Shellie

    Actually Jeff, I’m very saddened by the news also. Sad that this research did not begin years ago.Sad that my husband of 22 years was told this week that he has terminal cancer, that if we are very fortunate he may live for another year or two, that there is nothing that can be done, no remission, no hope.How can you be so cruel to compare the atrocities done to Jewish people by the Nazi scientists 50 odd years ago with scientists now trying to cure people with this terrible disease? Have you lost a loved one Jeff , to cancer or something else that took them before their time was due? Do you know what it is like to feel heart wrenching grief, to tell your children that their father has that most feared word of all, cancer? I applaud any politician brave & compassionate enough to follow this direction, thank you Mr Obama.

  • http://www.joyridesnh.com/ Scott Joy

    The New York Times published an article that left me wanting more. This is important scientific research. The moral debate is also important, but I hope it can be held more rationally.

  • http://www.internetmemorymattress.co.uk etrader

    What price do you put on a life?

  • http://www.rootsrain.com Jeff

    Shellie,

    I am so sorry to hear that your husband has been diagnosed with cancer. I really am. Because I know what it’s like to have someone close to me die from cancer. I know what it’s like to tend them day after day while you watch them deteriorate into the pale shell of the person they were. I know… It still catches in my throat. My father died of brain cancer when I was in college, followed 6 months later by my grandfather and then a year later by my other grandfather. I know that cancer will very probably come for me before my time.

    So the reason I would dare to compare embryonic stem cell research to something so horrible as Nazi experiments is that I understand human life to be sacred. Human life is not a political football or a scientific treasure box. Whether or not those cells look like a human, their value is fixed by Someone other than you or me or a scientist or a politician. So killing that life to extract its stem cells and run experiments on it is very closely analogous to Nazi experiments on Jews.

    It guts me to say so, but it will equally gut me to have to refuse treatment (if/when cancer comes for me) because the treatment was provided by the deaths of millions of embryonic children. I just can’t, in good conscience, be the willing beneficiary of that. I can’t hold onto life that hard.

  • Greg

    Wow. Hopefully they will never look at people with cancer genes as discardable. Oh wait, they already do. In the UK they will screen and destroy the embryos that carry the BRCA1 gene mutation. While it may be terrible that the gene leads to breast cancer, I still think too much of my wife that has the gene and was diagnosed with breast cancer to wish that she had been destroyed instead. At least she’s alive.

    For crying out loud, we’re better than this. And not to shock anyone, but the U.S. has been doing embryonic stem cell research for years and it hasn’t cured a thing. But it has lead to tumors in the mice they’ve tested though.

    Bad call on this one.