Senator Shafer Responds on Stem Cells

This past April, in response to a column by the AJC's Jim Wooten and a post by Peach Pundit's Erick Erickson regarding the passage of Senator David Shafer's Saving the Cure bill and the defeat of Senator David Adelman's bill to create a repository for current unwanted embryos, I asked what I believed was a simple question. What do we do about the excess embryos that currently exist?

Via email, Senator David Shafer (R-Alpharetta) author of Senate Bill 148, Saving The Cure, responds:

I am not sure if Jim or Erick answered you, but my answer is that we should explore techniques that do not create unwanted embryos in the first place. For example, in Germany, fertility doctors produce no more than three embryos at a time, implant them all and, except under limited circumstances, are not allowed to freeze them. There are probably less than 100 frozen embryos in the entire country and no "problem"about what to do with them.

I reject the notion that ethics are somehow incompatible with progressive science or medicine. In vitro fertilization can be accomplished without producing thousands of "unwanted" embryos and stem cell research can be conducted without harming human life at any stage of development. There are ethical alternatives that, in many cases, are better science and better medicine.

The goal of my legislation earlier this year (http://www.savingthecure.com/) was to advance the types of stem cell research which are ethically noncontroversial and, in many ways, more medically promising.

Let the discussion begin.