Vox Nova highlights the difference between McCain and Huckabee on Embryonic Stem Cell Research!!

Vox Nova had this very interesting article here called What the deal with Deal?.

The "Deal" is influential Catholic Deal Hudson that authored How to Vote Catholic. It appears that the author is taking Deal Husdson to task for ignoring the crucial difference between Huckabee and McCain on this important issue. They take from that article of his :

With the use of so-called assisted reproduction, we can see a link between these ideals and the practices that threaten to undermine them. The most disturbing is the use of cryopreservation (i.e., freezing) to store “spare” embryos. This practice, in effect, sentences an embryonic human being to a state of permanent suspension—literally frozen in time. For many, these embryos represent biological material for scientific experimentation, such as stem cell research.
The Church's message is one of enthusiastic support for biomedical science, yet firm opposition to killing in the name of research. To experiment on unused, unimplanted, or frozen embryos violates Church teaching and “reduces human life to the level of simple ‘biological material '” ( Evangelium Vitae , 14). The fact that surplus embryos have been effectively orphaned does not reduce them to the status of expendable research material, nor does it remove their right to be protected by law.

U.S. government policy limits federal funding for research to stem cell lines that were created prior to August 9, 2001. The Bush administration successfully prohibited federal funding for research involving embryo destruction after that date. However, federal law does not restrict privately funded embryo-destructive research, although there are prohibitions on such research in some states.

What makes the practice of using embryonic cells especially abhorrent is the fact that scientists have made significant progress on adult stem cells to the point that they now offer a promising alternative. Many people are alive today as a result of therapies using adult stem cells, while no one has ever been cured of any disease by embryonic stem cell therapies.

Some researchers seek to “harvest” tissues and organs by creating life through a cloning process known as somatic cell nuclear transfer. The Church teaches that cloning is morally wrong: “These techniques, insofar as they involve the manipulation and destruction of human embryos, are not morally acceptable, even when their proposed goal is good in itself” (Pope John Paul II, Address to International Congress on Transplants ).

Members of the U.S. Congress are now facing the issue of whether human clones, once they are created, can be killed for the sake of medical research or benefit. Immediate attention to this matter is critical.
No Catholic can justify such a policy.

The poster at Vox Nova is asking the sensible question that should engage Catholic voters in the upcoming primary.