Modern-Day Cannibals

By Richard D. Land, Christian Post Executive Editor Friday, February 13, 2009

Throughout his campaign for president, President Barack Obama said he would reverse President George W. Bush's ban on the federal funding of stem cell research on human embryos. Tragically, it appears he is keeping his word.

On Feb. 5, President Obama guaranteed during a closed-door meeting of House Democrats at their retreat in Williamsburg, Va., that he planned to sign an executive order overturning Bush's embryonic stem cell research funding policy, which Bush instituted in August 2001.

President Obama's promise is extremely disappointing but not surprising. He pledged during the campaign that he would lift President Bush's restrictions on using federal money to kill embryos in order to harvest their stem cells to try to find treatments for maladies afflicting older and bigger human beings.

The Washington Times reported that not only did Obama promise to throw open the federal funding floodgates for the experimentation that destroys human lives, he also told the group he wanted Congress to adopt legislation that would prevent any future president from reversing his policy allowing the funding.

Once again, as in the case of overturning the Mexico City Policy, President Obama's action forces those Americans who find such research both barbaric and repugnant to subsidize it with their tax money.

Reduced to its basics, killing the tiniest human beings in their embryonic stage of development for the possible medical benefits of older and more developed human beings is quite simply high-tech cannibalism.

We are devouring our own young for the sole purpose of hopefully treating other human beings who are merely fortunate enough to be older and able to defend themselves in a way the tiniest human beings are not.

To date, the human embryonic stem cell research that has taken place, which is privately funded or focuses on existing stem cell lines, has not provided breakthrough treatment for any human diseases. Yet immediate and dramatic clinical benefits are at hand in experimentation with stem cells safely and ethically secured from non-embryonic sources, according to an organization that focuses on research ethics, DoNoHarm