When it comes to medical research, more specifically embryonic stem cell research and presidential politics, the current president is playing to what our country calls the “Christian Conservatives” and their views on religious beliefs. The problem with that is the fact that some issues that the “Christian Conservatives” rather than looking at all beliefs they run with a specific belief on an issue that they either agree or disagree with and try to have a one sided debate with it.
The current president has made it a point to side with the “Christian Conservatives” on the embryonic stem cell research debate even though there are beliefs that to some degree contradict their stance.
Stem cells from my understanding are the cells that designate what is what in our body and we can use these stem cells to recreate pieces of that specific type of tissue. Embryonic stem cells are unspecified stem cells that haven’t been assigned a specific type of tissue to make and therefore have the ability to be told to create any type of tissue in the body. This gives us the opportunity to learn how stem cells work in general before they become specific to a type of tissue and to see what can and does go wrong in the creation of the different types of tissue so we can learn how to correct it.
The problem isn’t the research itself but rather the mentality of the people setting the public policy in government concerning medicine and research. These people who include the president try to put medicine and religion at odds with each other even though they go hand in hand due to religious doctrine. Religion states that it is our duty to heal the sick, which is were medicine comes into play.
It is understandable that many of the “Christian Conservatives” take a stance against embryonic stem cell research based on their religious beliefs. This is due to Christianity stating that life begins at conception and that we are not supposed to kill. At the same, there is a flip side to those as well. Religious doctrine not only states that we are not supposed to kill religious doctrine also states that we are supposed to learn, to heal the sick and to gain wisdom.
We cannot gain the wisdom needed that comes from learning if we place restrictions on what we learn or how we learn due to it going against one specific religious belief. By placing limits on what we learn and how we learn it when it comes to medical research we are hindering our ability to allow the medical community to do its job and in some cases we essentially are killing the people who we are in charge of healing because we are choosing to stand around and watch them die rather than learning how to heal them.
Where we are taught religion long before we are taught about government and politics we inherently put our religious beliefs into our politics. The people who were trusted to right the foundation of our country knew this and when they were writing the United States Constitution, they tried to limit the influence of both religion and government over each other. There will always be people including politicians who feel that there is no such writing in the constitution and others that feel that religion has no place in government at all.
Presidential politics is about running the country as effectively as the individual can run it given both domestic and international issues that relate to the people and the government, not using the Presidential podium as a pulpit to preach religious doctrine and limiting what we can do based on his own views on religious doctrine. The president if he uses the podium as a pulpit on the subject of embryonic stem cell research, belittles the researchers trying to do their jobs and he is forgetting that at one time many of the medical advancements we have achieved have come about even with religion being against it and how these advancements have helped us everyone including the people who didn’t believe in the advancement of medicine.
The has to be some sort of medium between secularism and religion when making decisions for the country as a whole since the country is a melting pot of cultures and religions rather than treating the country as if there is one culture and one religion.
Yes, in essence religion doesn’t permit us to kill, but at the same time if we choose not to do the Embryonic stem cell research then we are choosing to kill far more people that have illnesses we have no treatment for that may have had a cure stemming from that research.
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