July 28, 2006 12:37 PM
By Bradford Short
(NEW YORK - C-FAM) On Monday the European Commission decided to deny funds to researchers engaged in the destruction of human embryos to obtain stem cells. The European Commission is the executive branch of the European Union and its members report to the foreign ministries of EU member governments.
The European Commission engaged in vigorous debate late last week where members of the Commission from Germany, Poland, Austria, Malta, Slovakia, Lithuania and other nations proposed that the EU science budget cease funding for all research that directly or indirectly involves the destruction of human embryos. For years, the EU has funded embryo-destructive stem cell research with few restrictions on the use of such funds.
After negotiations ended on Monday, the only position that a majority of the Commission could agree on was that the actual killing of a human embryo, which is necessary for a scientist to then collect that embryo’s stem cells, would not be paid for by EU funds. However, the EU will still fund research on these embryonic stem cells as long the embryos were killed with other than government money. The EU will also fund research on embryonic stem cells taken from cloned, as opposed to fertilized, human embryos. The Commission also decided to refuse to fund research into the cloning of human embryos with the intent to bring those cloned embryos to birth.
In the United States, pursuant to executive action taken by President Bush, the Federal Government can pay for neither research that directly involves the killing of human embryos, nor for research on embryonic stem cells taken from embryos killed after Bush’s August 9, 2001 speech announcing his stem cell policy. However, laws in various States, such as California, do explicitly authorize that state funding can go towards not only research on embryonic stem cells, but also towards the actual killing of those embryos.
Dr. David Prentice, Senior Fellow for Life Sciences at the Family Research Council’s Center for Human Life and Bioethics and former Professor of Life Sciences at Indiana State University, told the Friday Fax that “the Europeans have chosen a policy much closer to President Bush’s policy than to the public policy of states like California.” This would be considered by many to be ironic because most Americans think that both the politicians and citizens of the European Union are very socially liberal, while the American media characterizes Bush’s policy on embryonic stem cell research as extremely conservative.
It should be reiterated that the EU will continue to pay for experimentation on stem cell lines derived from human embryos whose killing was paid for by something other than EU money.
