Iranian President Ahmedinejad, speaking at a National Right to Life dinner yesterday, denounced the “theory that human life actually exists”. The Iranian president, known for his denials of the Jewish holocaust in Nazi Germany and that terrorism existed in the Middle East prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, as well as his recent statements that there is no homosexuality in Iran, has earned himself a rare place in the Darwin Awards Hall of Fame.

In the prestigious St. Regis Hotel Potomac Ballroom, President Ahmedinejad - to jeers from the NRTL audience -  was quoted as saying, “I cannot imagine why you would claim a right to something, which we in Iran know does not exist. Perhaps you have such things in the United States - with your George Bush - but in Iran there is no such thing as life.”

National Right to Life President, Wanda Franz, could not be reached for comment. However, a staffer at the NRTL Headquarters related that President Ahmadinejad did not actually attend their dinner, but the Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratories dinner, which was coincidentally being held in the Mount Vernon Ballroom of the same Washington, DC hotel.

After this statement, a unnamed official close to the Iranian president was quoted as saying that the Mount Vernon Ballroom does not actually exist, so President Ahmadinejad could not possibly have spoken there.

Apparently, human skin cells can be manipulated to grow into cells for other tissue. This obviates the need to create human embryos for the purpose of destroying them in research.

The New York Times has an article about this, but I am not certain they are getting the stem cell attributes correctly. The article states the cells can be made to mimic embryonic stem cells, but all that really means is that the skin cells can be made to have undifferentiated properties, as do embryonic cells.

Something interesting did catch my eye though - Arlen Specter:

“I really don’t think anybody ought to take credit in light of the six-year delay we’ve had,” said Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the lead Republican sponsor of the bill that Mr. Bush vetoed in July 2006. “My own view is that science ought to be unfettered and that every possible alternative ought to be explored.”

“You’ve got a life-and-death situation here,” Mr. Specter continued, “and if we can find something which is certifiably equivalent to embryonic stem cells, fine. But we are not there yet.”

Mr. Specter is being unclear.  There has not been a six-year delay in stem cell research. The debate regarding embryonic stem cell research has not been a question of whether the research is or is not conducted. The question has been, should government fund it? Any delay on the part of the medical industry is caused by a lack of confidence that anything will be found by pursuing embryonic research.

In regards to stem cell research, science is unfettered - if the pharmaceutical companies want to invest in embryonic stem cell research, they are welcome to do so. What Arlen Specter wants to do is actually fetter science with government bureaucracy.  I find it interesting that research entities have spent so much time looking into things like skin cells, if the medical value of embryonic stem cells is so high.

“certifiably equivalent to embryonic cells” - The golden nugget everyone is chasing here is the ability of a cell to be groomed or grown into a cell of a very specific kind. Since embryonic cells are not “pre-programmed” this makes them valuable. Except that embryonic stem cells have produced no - none - zero - new cures in all the time this research has gone on, while other cells have been used in actual medical applications. It is also interesting to hear Mr. Specter talk about life and death situations - since embryonic stem cell research is a daily practice in life and death. A human is created solely for its destruction in the name of research.

I wonder how the same people who would tear their hair out over someone testing shampoo on a rabbit, would advocate the destruction of a human in the name of science. But, that goes directly to my mantra about liberals in general - take their ideas out to the furthest logical conclusion and you end up nowhere at all or back where you started.