Over at The Daily Beast, “Neurobiologist Maureen L. Condic investigates 11 common arguments in favor of embryonic stem-cell research, and explains why science may not need the controversial technique, after all.”

Well worth reading.

Several members of the President’s Council on Bioethics have weighed in on the President’s Executive Order on Stem Cell Resarch.

Although members of the President’s Council on Bioethics have been divided on this question and some of our colleagues disagree with us, we think it may be useful and clarifying to set the president’s action in three ways into the context of work the council has done over the past seven years.

I know the decision is a couple of weeks old at this point, but a ton of articles have recently come to my attention.

John Kass in the Chicago Tribune, Stem cell policy shift brings a sinking feeling

Christianity Today, In Over His Pay Grade: When science is made ‘apolitical’ and ‘unencumbered by religion,’ it’s usually to hyper-politicize and hyper-sacralize it.

Rep. Mike Pence in Christianity Today, The Empty Promise of Embryonic Stem Cell Research

Ross Douthat, Stem Cells and Moral Seriousness

This one has slipped my notice.  Thanks to MercatorNet for catching it.

Was Clinton’s language deliberate or grossly uninformed?

BTW, MercatorNet.com is definetly something you should be reading.  Thoughtful, well-reasoned, winsome — bookmark it and/or subscribe to their updates immediately.

Clearly, I don’t agree with everything Krauthammer has to say:

I am not religious. I do not believe that personhood is conferred upon conception. But I also do not believe that a human embryo is the moral equivalent of a hangnail and deserves no more respect than an appendix. Moreover, given the protean power of embryonic manipulation, the temptation it presents to science, and the well-recorded human propensity for evil even in the pursuit of good, lines must be drawn.

But his overall point is sound

Science has everything to say about what is possible. Science has nothing to say about what is permissible. Obama’s pretense that he will “restore science to its rightful place” and make science, not ideology, dispositive in moral debates is yet more rhetorical sleight of hand—this time to abdicate decision-making and color his own ideological preferences as authentically “scientific.”

My friends at The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network are completing work on a documentary on the stem cell and cloning debates. Check out the trailer for The Lines That Divide: The Great Stem Cell Debate.

Lines That Divide: The Great Stem Cell Debate from CBC Network on Vimeo.