Germans Overwhelmingly Oppose Human ESCR
We continually hear from the brave new world crowd that only religion would cause one to oppose ESCR and human cloning. That isn't true, of course., One need not be religious to have serious reservations about using nascent human life as a mere natural resource.
Here's some evidence demonstrating this point: German is a very secular country, and certainly isn't dominated by theocrats. And yet, a newly published German poll (no link in English, but here is the German.) is finds overwhelming opposition to human ESCR and embryo-destructive research. Here are the results:
The German January 2008 Opinion Poll on Stem Cell Research. The poll found that in 2008, 61% supported using only adult/or iPS cells. In 2007, this figure was 56.3%
Support for Embryo Protection Act - ban of destructive embryo research:
Only 26.9% also support ESCR, down from 32.9% last
year.A whopping 65.2% support the existing ban on destructive embryo
Interestingly, support for ESCR seems to be dropping. Perhaps this is because the advances in adult stem cell research are becoming more evident.
research, and 27.8% oppose, very close to last year's figures.
Labels: ESCR in Germany
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 12:59 PM
4 Comments
4 Comments:
Could you post the link to the study despite it being German? Thanks!
Christoph: I added the link in the main post. Thanks for stopping by.
Conversly the first country to in the EU to actually vote had different results.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4049141.stm
Swiss endorse stem cell research
Embryo research
Some say the backers of stem cell research are offering false hope
Voters in Switzerland have strongly backed a new law permitting research on the stem cells of human embryos.
Two-thirds of voters said "yes" to the government's proposals, opposed by religious and left-wing groups.
Nationwide referendums are common in Switzerland, but this vote makes it the first country in the world to put the controversial issue to a popular vote.
That article was last updated in 2004, and since then there were some breakthroughs with adult stem cells and reprogrammed skin cells, so it would be interesting to see how they would vote now.
The study in Germany actually included those points and the questions posed mentioned that only adult stem cell treatments were successful so far, that skin cells have been reprogrammed into stem cells, that researchers are hopeful to successfully use embryonic stem cells, and finally that embryos have to be destroyed to get those embryonic stem cells.
Thanks for posting it even though it was German!
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