Republican congressional candidate Jeff Lamberti says his Democrat opponent is misrepresenting his position on stem cell research.
Congressman Leonard Boswell voted to expand federally-funded stem cell research and criticized Lamberti for opposing the bill — and supporting the president’s veto of it because Boswell says it will delay progress in medical research for the cures to diseases and spinal cord injuries.
But Lamberti says there’s plenty of existing stem cell lines available for that research, and he opposes federal funding for expanded stem cell research because new human embryos would be destroyed. “My best friend from high school who is still my best friend today, Rick Cox, was 19 years old when he was paralyzed in a motorcycle accident. There’s nobody around (who) wants to find a cure to paralysis than me,” Lamberti says. “It’s not fair to the people to cloud what that issue really means.”
Lamberti says it “crosses a line” to allow the creation of more human embryos, that are then “intentionally destroyed” through research. Lamberti also says stem cell lines created from adult donors are also being used in groundbreaking research and he has no problems with that.