Staminali embrionali e argomentazioni sciocche

In una lettera alla National Review Online («Stem-Cell Back and Forth», 13 giugno 2006), Jonathan Moreno e Sam Berger commentano un articolo di Eric Cohen, un conservatore che si oppone alla creazione di nuove linee di cellule staminali embrionali:

In the end, Cohen is left with the argument that embryonic-stem-cell research has produced “no therapeutics applications, or even human trials.” But surely we could expect nothing more from a field that is barely eight years old and, unlike other promising new areas of science, has not received adequate federal funding and support. The notion that we should not fund research because it will be some time before we have clinical applications is self-defeating. In adopting this impatient posture, Cohen betrays a failure to understand the nature of medical research, which is a painstaking process that can take decades to bear its full fruit.
Cohen also ignores the advances that embryonic-stem-cell research has caused in drug development and testing. Already, for example, Australian scientists have used embryonic stem cells to grow human prostates in mice in order to study prostate cancer, and scientists in Scotland and Italy have used embryonic stem cells to create nerve cells to test new drugs for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.

Nella sua replica, Cohen protesta che queste obiezioni non toccano gli argomenti da lui proposti nell’articolo; ma di certo toccano – e da vicino – gli argomenti proposti durante gli ultimi giorni nel dibattito italiano sulle cellule staminali.