Pelosi: GOP Spending Cuts Hurt “Biblical Power to Cure” People

Bioethics   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Mar 11, 2011   |   1:50PM   |   Washington, DC

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is making waves with a comment she made during a press conference about the budget cuts Republicans have advocated and they have her drawing criticism.

House Republicans have proposed cutting $1 billion from the agency’s budget in an attempt to reduce spending levels in the face of a beleaguered economy and rising debt.

Pelosi, according to a CNS News report, said the GOP proposal to cut the National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget would hurt the ability of the research NIH funds and its “Biblical power to cure.”

“There’s a cut in funding for the National Institutes of Health. This is not a healthy thing for our country because that research has answers,” Pelosi said, according to CNS. You know that every family in America is one telephone call, one diagnosis, one accident away from needing the kind of biomedical research that can cure–really have the biblical power to cure in a very, very special way and so to cut back on that research is wrong.”

The comment appears to refer to the embryonic stem cell research NIH has actively been funding since President Barack Obama issued an executive order overturning the protections pro-life President George W. Bush put in place to prevent taxpayer funding of new embryonic stem cell research that involves the destruction of human life. The NIH has been aggressively funding ESCR while a lawsuit seeking to overturn the executive order moves forward.

The funding comes even though embryonic stem cell research has never cured a single patient or even been tried in humans because of significant problems associated with using embryonic stem cells in animals — such as immune system rejection issues and the development of tumors.

Dr. David Prentice, a former biology professor from Indiana State University now associated with the Family Research Council, talked with LifeNews.com about the comment.

“Pelosi continues her long-running practice of misleading the public regarding fictional ‘cures’ from embryonic stem cells, as well as Obamacare,” he said. “Embryonic stem cells have not helped a single patient, nor even many mice, in thirty years of research; their primary outcome has been tumors and mutations.”

“Pelosi is wrong about embryonic stem cells–she has no evidence of cures, power, nor anything biblical.  The only success for patients from any stem cell has been with adult stem cells,” he added.