That’s what Elizabeth Edwards has said about hearing all the news about her breast cancer spreading to her bones. Now she’s stumping for a more liberal stem cell research policy stating, “If people think that you’re throwing babies out, dissecting children, to do stem-cell research, I’m not for that,” and this, “We’re talking about using something to save ourselves and our children,” she said. “Instead of throwing it away, don’t we want to use it in a way that’s productive?”

What is the ‘it’ we are throwing away? “clumps of 16 or 32 cells that were collected by fertility clinics but are no longer needed and would otherwise be thrown away.” The “it” would be those hotly debated spare and leftover frozen embryos which we are told again and again (but no one seems to be listening) are not enough for the research AND of suboptimal quality.

Author Profile

Jennifer Lahl, CBC President
Jennifer Lahl, CBC President
Jennifer Lahl, MA, BSN, RN, is founder and president of The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network. Lahl couples her 25 years of experience as a pediatric critical care nurse, a hospital administrator, and a senior-level nursing manager with a deep passion to speak for those who have no voice. Lahl’s writings have appeared in various publications including Cambridge University Press, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Dallas Morning News, and the American Journal of Bioethics. As a field expert, she is routinely interviewed on radio and television including ABC, CBS, PBS, and NPR. She is also called upon to speak alongside lawmakers and members of the scientific community, even being invited to speak to members of the European Parliament in Brussels to address issues of egg trafficking; she has three times addressed the United Nations during the Commission on the Status of Women on egg and womb trafficking.