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The conservative group Americans United for Life put out a statement today calling President Obama’s decision to allow federal funding for embryonic stem cell research a waste of tax payer money. More importantly others are worried that Obama will start cloning people.

After Obama signed an executive order lifting the restriction on federal funding for stem cell research, social conservatives went ballistic. Right wingerGary Bauer is worried that Obama is going to lift the ban on human cloning, “My concern is that the long-term result of this work will lead to a lifting of the ban against human cloning, a development that would allow testing in laboratories on human embryos, human life. But today, Obama’s decision to allow federal tax dollars to be used to destroy human embryos is tragic on many levels. He raises false hope for those who are ill; he strains the American taxpayer at a time of economic crisis, and he ignores the humanity of the lives ended in cold laboratories to satisfy a liberal ideology.”

Dr. Charmaine Yoest, President & CEO of Americans United for Life responded, “Embryonic stem cell research is the research of the past. Millions of dollars have been spent on embryonic stem cell research and it has failed. To pour more money into it is simply a waste.”This doesn’t sound like everything else that I have read on the subject, could Dr. Yoest have another reason for her opposition?

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Dr. Yoest continued, “Even more, this research destroys lives at the very earliest stage of development. Adult stem cell research is helping people now. If we’re going to put tax dollars into research — particularly at a time of unprecedented federal deficits — it needs to be research that protects life and helps patients now.” There it is. Contrary to what all objective scientists say, the social conservatives are arguing that adult stem cells are the way to go.

The new social conservative argument is based on the idea that Barack Obama is wasting tax payer money by trying to fund research that could possibly cure a wide variety of diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, cancer and many other conditions, so they are going to deny a potential cure on moral grounds. Furthermore, this argument about cloning is silly. Obama is not in favor of cloning, and no one has proposed lifting the ban on cloning. It is not like we are start cultivating human beings for genetic harvesting. This is straight out of some sort of paranoid sci-fi.

How cruel do a group of people have to be to deny a potential cure to the sick and dying? They claim to be protecting life, but what about the lives of those that are already born? Don’t they count too? Social conservatives know that this is a losing argument, which is why they tried to turn it into a spending issue. Obama’s Executive Order puts the White House back in step with the desires of the majority of Americans on this issue, which is a very good thing.