by Linda Gehring

Created on: February 17, 2009

The fact that there are now questions and debates after this week's spending package actually is quite incredible. We are now 11 trillion in debt. This is not monopoly money, and any and all spending eventually comes out in costs to the American people. We are now in a no win war which doesn't appear Obama either will be addressing or instituting any fundamental change. We could have stimulated the economy by simply calling an end to this war and had several billion per month in order to reduce our overall debt. Instead Congress spent more. Throwing money at problems does not work. The same can be said of the stem cell research debate.

In opening such a can of worms, the moral and ethical ramifications could be enormous. In all the debate, there has been one very relevant point missing to the arguments that those who support such legislation have ignored, and continue to ignore. Actually, there is not one but two: (1) The medical community has yet to exhaust the potential in the use of cord cells for many genetic and neurological diseases, such as Alzheimer's, traumatic brain injuries, or other affirmities; and (2) any such research and development should not be publicly funded, but privately funded as not a function of the federal government to begin with.

Harvesting aborted fetuses to use for research smacks of Orwell's novel, "1984" and potentially could result in this country due to the capitalist mentality in women actually becoming pregnant for the sole purpose of selling their aborted fetuses for research. Don't think that could happen? Think again. How many organizations now pay for citizens to be lab rats for experimental treatments and drugs. At this point, there are people who also make a supplemental income selling their blood to public and private health care facilities. The potential for abuse of such a practice is enormous, and blackmarketed fetuses also then could be resold to private medical research facilities or pharmeceutical companies. Where would you store these embryos until they are then transferred to the medical research centers? The mind simply boggles at the negatives, which far outweigh the positives at this time in our history.

At the present time many of these researchers are also under grant monies for medical procedures that would also suffer cuts in their funding, which are just as important and relevant. The cure for various forms of cancer is still out of reach, as is many other diseases. Personally, I do believe that since AIDS is an immune deficiency disease, that a cure most likely already has been found. Unfortunately, the pharmeceutical companies gain patents on most of the drugs and make a heft profit on them for a number of years before they can be then also released as generics. Unlike days of old, there is an inherent motivation in the medical and health care community NOT to cure many diseases but simply use the research monies in order to economically profit at the public's expense. It is strange to me how many of the scientists that cured most of the life threatening diseases in years past worked without any grants or loans from the federal government. With far less high tech equipment than we have today.

Unless and until the research has been exhausted in cord stem cell and it's potential, and with the other priorities the Obama administration just took on in a debt that exceeds the GNP of every other nation in the world which we will be paying for years to come, such a prospect seems too far reaching, and with too many potential negative consequences.

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