Roscoe Bartlett: “earlier today I participated in a news conference with about a dozen Snowflake babies who were adopted as embryos, along…”

“earlier today I participated in a news conference with about a dozen Snowflake babies who were adopted as embryos, along with five colleagues who are medical doctors. Very few media came to see these children and record their smiles, squirms, dancing, and other delightful antics. How can anyone look at them and say that it would have been okay to kill them to produce stem cell lines? I can state unequivocally that it is morally reprehensible and scientifically unnecessary to kill human embryos to provide raw fodder for scientific research. For the vast majority of scientists and medial researchers, pluripotent stem cells hold the most promise for understanding human diseases and treating devastating conditions. That is why they are coveted. To some, the manner in which these pluripotent stem cells would be obtained under the Castle-DeGette bill, by using taxpayers' dollars to kill a human embryo, is secondary to the hope for cures that they represent to sick patients. To me and millions of other Americans, deliberately taking the lives of innocent human embryos is an unacceptable trade-off. A number of scientists have now proven what I have argued for the past 5 years. It is scientifically unnecessary to destroy human embryos to obtain pluripotent stem cells. Indeed, at least one procedure is almost immediately ready for human clinical application.…”