Video: Moreno Explains Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act

Almost a year after President Bush’s second veto of the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act, Reps. Diana DeGette (D-CO) and Michael Castle (R-DE) are preparing new legislation that would lift the federal ban on funding for new lines of embryonic stem cells and create an ethical oversight mechanism for all research in the area.

New advancements in stem cell research that have created pluripotent stem cells from non-embryonic sources have brought the necessity of embryonic stem cell research into question. Why get into the politics of embryonic research when you can create the same research from adult cells?

But Jonathan Moreno, in a video interview with the Center for American Progress, explains that, “we’re not going to know for a number of years if adult stem cells can do everything that we believe embryonic stem cells could do under the right conditions. Some recent research, for example, shows that the older the person from whom the skin cell is taken, the harder it is to reprogram that adult cell into a pluripotent stem cell.” What’s more, “even if adult stem cells do work, human embryonic stem cells are needed as comparisons to see if those adult stem cells really do approximate in a useful way the qualities of human embryonic stem cells.” Watch the video:

President Bush’s repeated failure to allow embryonic stem cell research legislation to move forward, despite strong majorities in both houses of Congress who support the legislation, is blocking progress in the life and medical sciences in the United States. Americans agree by a very wide 64 percent to 31 percent majority that Bush should not veto this legislation. Hopefully this time Bush will listen to the American public and scientific community. If not, the United States will only continue to fall behind in the race for lifesaving cures and lose American scientists.

Tags: stem cells

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