Whether the sun revolved around the earth or the earth followed its orbit around the sun made no difference at all in the lives of the people of the 15th Century. The sun still rose in the east each morning and set in the west each evening. The seasons still passed from winter’s chill through spring’s blossoming to summer’s heat and autumn’s harvest. That the Church and secular authorities stifled the expansion of human knowledge did not have a direct impact on the lives of the men in the fields or the families seeking their daily bread in the cities. We have come a long way since then. Our vision has extended to the stars and galaxies in their pirouetting dance through our boundless universe. We have plumbed the depths of the ocean to discover new living neighbors on our own planet and we send to learn if life once flourished on our neighboring world. We have come a long way since Galileo stood accused before the Inquisition for daring to publish a scientific truth.

Or have we? The world is not flat and the earth follows its graceful course around and around the sun. We have delved the mysteries of human life, deciphered its genetic codes and begun to understand the process by which a cell divides and then divides again until it becomes a man or woman. From that knowledge has come the promise of stem cell therapies that may arrest or cure or even reverse the effects of many diseases that afflict mankind. That exploration, that expansion of human knowledge is the new heresy; forbidden in the drive to impose a 21st Century religious orthodoxy on the scientific community.

Silencing Galileo had no impact upon the people of his century. Stifling stem cell research impacts nearly every family and consigns millions now alive to the lingering creeping death that afflicted President Reagan and through him his wife and children. Stifling stem cell research eliminates the possibility that a cure will be found in the laboratory for diabetes and that affects fully 40% of the American public who have or will develop that condition. Banning the promising avenue of medical inquiry removes the hopes of millions whose lives are degraded and shortened by multiple sclerosis, lupis, or scleroderma that a way to arrest their afflictions may be found. That the political inhibition of a promising avenue of medical research is touted as the “pro-life” position while it sends millions more on a back street to a lingering and degrading death is the supreme expression of hypocritical irony. Must we return to the Dark Ages or shall we emerge from the darkness into an era of compassionate enlightenment? It is up to us.