Government Should Legalize But Not Fund All Forms Of Stem Cell Research, Opinion Piece Says

Main Category: Stem Cell Research
Also Included In: Women's Health / Gynecology
Article Date: 01 Dec 2006 - 9:00 PST

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Although "stem cells hold the promise of incredible medical progress," government funding for stem cell research creates a "false hope" and "will only inhibit private donors and investors from stepping up to the plate," Sigrid Fry-Revere, director of bioethics studies at the Cato Institute, writes in a Los Angeles Times opinion piece. Although five states since 2003 have pledged billions of dollars to support stem cell research and six more states this year promised funds, political opposition has prevented "all but a few million dollars" to be granted to researchers, according to Fry-Revere. Private investors often require "strings" to funding, such as access to laboratory financial records, but private funders are "more efficient than government at doling out research money," Fry-Revere writes. Government-funded stem cell research "has proved bureaucratic, expensive, wasteful, fickle and divisive," she writes, adding, "[W]hen stem cell research is not a political football, less time and money is wasted on campaigns, bureaucracy and litigation. More important, those who object to the research aren't forced to fund it." Fry-Revere writes that "governments should not make promises they cannot keep due to political opposition and their own inefficiency," concluding, "We should legalize stem cell research in all its forms, protecting universities and private organizations from the uncertainties of political whims, and leave it at that" (Fry-Revere, Los Angeles Times, 11/28).

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