DIANA DEGETTE SAYS CONGRESS IS PLAYING GOD!

Playing God?

How sad and ironic that Representative
Degette doesn't recognize the grave danger
to her eternal soul by her advocacy of destroying
some innocent human lives for the benefit of others.

The Creator of the universe implores us to protect
and revere the innocents; not use them as a means
to an end. Killing a human being for the potential
of an enhanced quality of life, for those suffering illness,
is evil.

Playing God, indeed.

Leslie Hanks
V.P. Colorado Right to Life

DeGette to continue pushing for stem-cell research
By: The Denver Post
Created 12/02/2007 - 10:14am

U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette of Colorado made news this past week by endorsing Sen. Hillary Clinton for president. She'll be back in the spotlight in coming weeks as she continues her fight for federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research in light of a promising new study that ordinary skin cells can be transformed into embryonic stem cells.

POST: What do you think about last week's developments?

DeGETTE: To take adult stem cells and make them essential to other kinds of cells is a big breakthrough. But I would also sound a cautionary note that this research is really still in its nascent stages, and it is not — certainly at this point — a substitute for other kinds of research, like embryonic stem-cell research.

The religious right and the White House, every time there's some other breakthrough, they want to say that's a substitute for embryonic stem-cell research. In fact, we don't know which of these types of research will end up being the research that will end up curing all these diseases.

What we do know is embryonic stem-cell research is almost 10 years ahead of this new type of discovery, and so there are a lot of advances coming, particularly out of Great Britain and some other countries, on skin regeneration on macular degeneration.

I expect you'll see some big announcement in the next few months about embryonic stem cell research or somatic cell nuclear transfer or some other technique. What this all points out to me is that Congress needs to stop playing God, Congress and the White House need to stop telling researchers what types of cell research they should be doing.

POST: Do you foresee yourself running another embryonic stem-cell bill?

DeGETTE: I certainly do intend to reintroduce the bill, but we may want to look at other ways to move the issue.

We are so close on the research with so many of these diseases. One of my colleagues, Jim Langevin of Rhode Island, he's been in a wheelchair since he had a gun accident. You know they're close to nerve regeneration, they're close with the islet cell regeneration with diabetics. What it's going to take is some serious attention and resources through the NIH to all of this research.

I'm not going to say it's embryonic stem-cell research or it's adult stem-cell research or it's somatic cell nuclear transfer. Everybody was really happy to see that research announced last week, but ... we've got to think really hard about the ethics of what we're doing.

U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO) speaks as Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) listens during a news conference on the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act, January 9, 2007 on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Getty Images / Alex Wong) DC.

I went to England a couple of years ago. They have a whole system that they set up around the time in vitro fertilization clinics were set up. A board reviews all research proposals, not just embryonic stem-cell proposals, but anything having to do with these kinds of research.

The board is composed of researchers who don't have a financial interest, lay people and elected officials. And before someone can do this research in Great Britain, they have to submit a proposal to this board. We don't have anything like that in this country, even for the federal-funded lines of embryonic stem-cell research. We don't have any code of ethics for that or any ethical review.