This is Nancy Pearcey, in the Public Square.
America is in a face-off between science and religion. That's how the press paints the embryonic stem cell debate. But the truth is, the science invoked is pure junk science.
Stephen J. Gould of Harvard recently argued in the New York Times that a human embryo is not really human-that it develops first into a vertebrate, then a mammal, and only then into a human.
This comes from the old idea that the embryo replays the steps of evolution. It was proposed a century ago by German biologist Ernst Haeckel, who drew embryos lined up side by side-fish, frog, chicken, and human embryos.
You've all seen the picture. The trouble is, it was fudged. Faked. It's astonishing that scientists are resurrecting an old idea that's been soundly discredited, to support stem cell research.
Copyright 2001 Nancy Pearcey. All rights reserved.
International copyright secured.
File Date: 11.09.01