"You Could Hear a Pin Drop".(hearings on stem cell research)(Brief Article)

You could hear a pin drop at a packed hearing held July 17 by the House Government Reform Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources. And that hushed reverence wasn't because of the awe-inspiring (and extremely controversial) topic on the agenda: stem cell research that would require the destruction of human embryos.

Instead the spectators were taken aback by the powerful testimony against proposals to lethally cull stem cells from human embryos. These objections were personified and made real by extraordinary witnesses who demonstrated both that nascent human life is no less human life than any other and that there are morally unobjectionable alternatives to vivisecting human embryos.

John and Lucinda Borden are the parents of nine-month-old twins, Mark and Luke. What made this otherwise unremarkable fact keenly significant was that the boys were adopted as embryos through the California-based Snowflakes Embryo Adoption Program. In this program genetic parents donate their embryos to infertile couples.

Mark and Luke's flesh-and-blood existence dismantled two noxious ideas expounded by proponents of stem cell research that would require the destruction of human embryos: that all "spare" embryos will be destroyed--and therefore why not lethally cull their stem cells to attempt to remedy various diseases--and that early human life is nothing more than a clump of cells lacking in moral and ethical significance.

As his wife, Lucinda, held up a photo of their boys when they were embryos, John Borden rose from behind the witness table, a son cradled in each arm. His arms full of love, his voice filled with indignation, John Borden asked, "Which one of my children would you kill? Which one would you choose to take?"

If that weren't dramatic enough, interspersed between these two questions came the sound of a baby who had chosen just that moment to playfully squawk. This very human response underscored what Lucinda ...