Four thousand a day. That's a waste.

I first heard this story on NPR's Morning Edition last Friday (the 10th). There's a doctor in China who has been treating ALS and spinal cord injuries by injecting olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs) from aborted fetuses into the patient's brain (in the case of ALS) or spine (for those with spinal cord injuries). Dr. Huang admits that he doesen't understand fully why the treatment seems to help, but points out that "if we don't put the research into practice, it's meaningless. Research is all about creating a foundation for treatment and [to] find out the fallability of surgery."

These treatments are't curing the patients and it's debatable that they're even helping. Some critics think that Dr. Huang's operational methods (not decompressing the spinal fluid or decoupling the vertebrae) are what seem to cause improvements. Still, the man is trying.

Here's the part that burns me up. The NPR story and story in the Guardian Unlmited each feature patients who are anti-abortion. In the NPR report, the patient's fiance is admittedly anti-abortion.

I don't believe in abortion. I do believe that the child is conceived and that's the person. [I]t's very difficult for me because any platform or position I've had in my life, I've tried to have the utmost integrity. As Steven was getting sick, I knew - I knew that this could be an opportunity and knowing that I was coming here, I don't say a lot about it because I don't want to talk out of two sides of my mouth, which I have to in order to be here.

The patient in the Guardian article is even more upfront about the change in his ideas. The patient is "a Christian, anti-abortion Texan who has sold his house so that he can travel to communist, atheist China and have Huang inject a million cells from the nasal area of a foetus into his spine." Here's what he has to say about his change of tune.

I wish there was another way they could do it. There are 4,000 abortions a day in the US. Partial-birth ones are murder on a most terrible level. What they are doing here is a whole lot more humane.

Four thousand a day. That's a waste. Something good should come out of something bad. The people who don't believe that aren't in a wheelchair.

My first reaction was to excoriate these people for not practicing what they preach. How dare they fight so hard to outlaw or regulate this emerging science and suddenly change their minds when it becomes an issue for them. How ironic, I thought, that these silly, weak-willed people be trapped in the very situation that helps them see the need.

I let myself be smug for a few days. Then I really thought about it. I know that these tragedies can change one's outlook. My step-father suffered a spinal cord injury and was confined to a wheelchair until recently and has had to comes to grips with his new reality. I must applaud these people for trying to overcome their afflictions. My hope is that they see the good that can come out of this type of medical research and that we have to ensure it continues. My fear is that when these treatments don't work - these people are in a nutshell human guinea pigs - that they return to their previously held beliefs. I pray that their stance doesn't flip back and that the fundamentalist right will hold them up as more "evidence" that we have to ban this type of scientific research.