26 October 2004
The country’s largest faith-based association of doctors, the Christian Medical Association, today called California’s Proposition 71 — a ballot initiative concerning funding for stem-cell research — a “welfare” bill for scientists, and suggested that scientists who supported embryonic stem-cell research were hunting fame and fortune. The CMA press release follows last month’sLA Times report about the rhetorical shift of stem-cell opponents, from controversial “abortion” arguments, to claims of financial concern. The Times report quoted a Catholic activist who’d been instructed not to focus on her moral opposition in public, so that religious arguments wouldn’t cloud the new “budget-conscious” approach.