The House of Representatives defeated a bogus bill last week that would have provided for research on cloned human embryos – legislation being sold by sponsors as a “ban”. 213 congressmen, including Idaho’s Bill Sali and Mike Simpson, voted against the con job.

But despite the victory, fans of human farming are not ready to quit. There is another bill up for consideration soon which seeks to overturn the president’s ban on destroying human embryos for research purposes.

The embryonic stem cell debate is only part of the picture that Americans need to understand. Proponents of harvesting stem cells from human embryos want not only to harvest stem cells. The larger money is in using human embryos for organs.

A 2005 article in Human Nature magazine entitled, “The Organ Factory”. It lays out a case for cloning human embryos and growing them in test tubes until at least ten weeks after conception. In this analysis, scientists argue that at that point, they could harvest cells which have already “specialized” into early hearts, kidneys, eyes, brains and neural networks. Once harvested, organs could be grown for transplant into the “lucky” donors.

It is clear from a careful reading that even ten weeks would be nothing more than the next moveable line. Every line of this “ethical whitewash” is pure utilitarianism. If some ambitious company or team of researchers decide they need even more time in order to sell “cures” to a desperate public – so be it.

Embryonic stem cell research is wrong because human beings are not a means to some end; as the Gospel teaches – we are ends in ourselves, from the moment that life begins.