| Church misses the voice of God calling us forward by WILLIAM A. HOLMES The article, Stem cells raise questions about ethics, healing in the Sept. 4 edition of the UMConnection, reminded me again of the churchs propensity to fight rear guard actions instead of leading and being a prophetic voice. There is virtually no person or organization in the country favoring human cloning. Scientists are against it, educators are against it and Congress is against it. It is unfair at best, and a scare tactic at worst, to cloak this issue in a frightening choice between cloning human beings or not cloning them. The real choice is between a therapeutic cloning of stem cells that holds the promise of helping millions of people; or a law that stops medical research in its tracks research which has become the hope of people with heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimers and Parkinsons, spinal cord injuries and a vast array of other illnesses. Some 130 million Americans now suffer from chronic or debilitating conditions that this research may benefit. There is a bill now before Congress, which, while opposing human cloning, supports therapeutic cloning of stem cells. Supporters of that bill include Mrs. Ronald Reagan, former President Gerald Ford, 40 Nobel laureates, the Presbyterian Church, USA, and such senators as Orin G. Hatch who has said, I come to this issue with a strong pro-life and pro-family record. ... An important aspect of being pro-life is to support the technologies that help the living. While the United Methodist Church has no formal position on research involving human stem cells, the denominations Board of Church and Society supports a ban on embryonic stem cell research. If such a ban prevails, we will have once again aligned ourselves against new knowledge, scientific advancement and human progress even as we did in the times of Copernicus, Galileo, Darwin and Freud. And once again the people of God will have missed the voice of God calling us to a new frontier. The Rev. William A. Holmes, retired, is currently serving as the chairman of the Ethics Advisory Committee of Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, D.C. | 
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