Readers deserve an apology from Tucker

Cynthia Tucker in her recent column titled "Restore hope, science to rightful place" uses simplistic religious examples which don't apply to 99.9 percent of religions in America as her "straw dog" to demean people of faith as being totally ignorant and backward because they fail to worship "Science" as the main solution to the problems in the world.

Cynthia Tucker praises President Barack Obama for "restoring science to it's rightful place." I'm not sure where Cynthia believes "science" has gone but everything that I see and read it has a pretty exalted place in our society. As an example she praises Obama because he is expected to reverse former President Bush's stance on expanding stem cell research. She even opines that we have become "a nation of superstitious ignoramuses" of course inferring that because the country has not met her standards of change we are all a bunch of dunces.

Tens of millions of Americans also reject embryonic stem cell research because a human embryo is a human being. Incidentally it is science that tells us when human life begins and it is not a matter of dogma or religion; it is a scientific fact provable in any scientific laboratory that life begins at conception. The ironic part of this debate is that recent scientific breakthroughs at the University of UCLA have confirmed that human skin cells can be converted to stem cells which are virtually identical to embryonic stem cells. Here we have a great example of science giving us a great breakthrough which will bring tremendous cures in the areas of cancer, heart disease, Parkinson's etc. and yet Cynthia Tucker is calling us "superstitious ignoramuses" because her agenda of embryonic stem cells has not been met.

I think that Cynthia Tucker calling Americans "a nation of superstitious ignoramuses" is despicable and that she needs to apologize to her readers as her comments were both crude and demeaning.

Larry O'Neill

Palatine