IRVINE, CA-"All who value human life should applaud legislation just passed by Australia's Senate-legislation that removes some restrictions on scientific research using stem cells from human embryos," said David Holcberg from the Ayn Rand Institute.
"Such legislation," explained Holcberg, "will help free Australian researchers to discover new treatments for an immense variety of medical conditions, from diabetes to cancer to Parkinson's disease.
"American legislators," Holcberg continued, "should go even further than their Australian counterparts. They should rescind all laws that restrict or ban research involving stem cells and embryos. The government should be stripped of its power to regulate scientific research and man's quest for knowledge. The government's only proper function is to protect individual rights. But an embryo-which is, in the time-frame relevant here, a primitive cluster of cells-has no rights. Only independent, living human beings do.
"To sacrifice the lives of countless actual human beings, whose illnesses will go untreated, for the sake of the non-existent rights of a few cells, is an unspeakable crime."
Ayn Rand Institute resident fellow Onkar Ghate is available for interviews on this topic.
The Ayn Rand Institute, an educational organization established in 1985, seeks to advance novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism and its principal tenets: reason, rational egoism and laissez-faire capitalism. For further information, contact ARI Media Relations. Phone: (949) 222-6550 ext. 213; fax (949) 222-6558; e-mail: interview@aynrand.org or visit ARI's Web site at: http://www.aynrand.org.
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