Research efforts using adult stem cells and stem cells from umbilical cord blood have already produced successful treatments for living human beings. Experimental treatments have shown success in helping patients with a variety of serious diseases including heart disease, diabetes, and leukemia.

Continuing research suggests that all of the future medical advances promised for so-called therapeutic human cloning and embryonic stem cell research can be more effectively achieved using adult and cord blood stem cells. The potential to find treatments for diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and heart disease is much greater using these ethical sources of stem cells.

“Therapeutic” human cloning (somatic cell nuclear transfer) and embryonic stem cell research have failed to produce any usable medical advances so far. Private investment capital has dried up for these fruitless pursuits. No wonder finding government funding has become so urgent.

More sources of potential stem cells from adult tissue are being discovered on a regular basis.  A recent example comes in an April article about baby teeth offering the potential to repair brains, mend hearts and grow new adult teeth. Scientists at the Royal Adelaide Hospital’s Hanson Institute are using discarded baby teeth to grow human tissue to replace damaged cells in various parts of the human body. Stem cells taken from baby teeth are being influenced to grow into bone, cartilage, muscle, and brain cells.

If researchers are encouraged to pursue “therapeutic” cloning, their efforts will be directed to less likely sources of usable treatments.  These researchers should be encouraged to put their efforts into working with stem cells that have already shown significant promise rather than those that have only led to dead ends and dead embryos.

Diabetes research organizations, among others, are misguided in pushing for passage in the Illinois Senate of HB 3589, called the Stem Cell Research Act. For truth in labeling, it should be identified as the human cloning bill. Why encourage more effort pursuing a dead end when a more promising alternative exists?

Let researchers who want to continue pursuing this unethical dead end move to New Jersey or California. The legislatures of those states were already duped into support of human cloning and embryonic stem cell research by special interests pushing the dubious benefits of so-called therapeutic cloning. Such research causes the death of human embryos to obtain their stem cells.

Illinois can do much better than to follow the lead of New Jersey and California. To achieve prominent medical advances, research using adult and umbilical cord blood stem cells should be encouraged. Fortunately, because of concerns expressed by citizens about human cloning in any form, the Illinois Senate has so far not been convinced to pass HB 3589.