Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk says that John Kerry is misleading the public about stem cell research, according to Austin Ruse of the Culture of Life Foundation.

Father Pacholczyk is a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, Mass., who holds a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Yale, did post-doctoral work at Harvard, and studied theology and bioethics in Rome.

According to Father Pacholczyk, Kerry is inaccurate when he implies that cures for major diseases are right around the corner if only President Bush's executive order were reversed.

Kerry said that "some of the most pioneering cures and treatments are right at our fingertips, but because of the stem cell ban, they remain beyond our reach" in a radio address in August.

Father Pacholczyk complains that Kerry "has bought into the general line that by destroying embryos we are going to be immediately opening up radical new cures for all kinds of ailments."

Kerry is ignoring the major ethical problem with embryonic stem cell research. It is not stem cell research that critics oppose but the creation of human embryos for the specific purpose of using them for research and destroying them in the process.

In other words, the person needing treatment would be cloned and then the cells from the embryo would be used for the treatment, destroying the embryo in the process.

Those who support further research have not addressed this significant ethical difficulty.

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