The National Institutes of Health have finalized new guidelines on federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research.

Prior to President Barack Obama's executive order in March, taxpayer dollars could fund only research using human embryonic stem cell (HESC) lines created before Aug. 9, 2001. That allowed HESC research without further destruction of embryos, which is necessary to create the lines.

The new guidelines allow taxpayer-funded research with HESC lines created after Aug. 9, 2001. The guidelines create an illusion of ethical rigor, but they will increase the demand for destruction of embryos.

Nebraska law bans human cloning and human embryo destruction at state facilities. But state facilities could import HESCs from embryos destroyed elsewhere, thereby contributing to the increased demand for embryo destruction.

Reaction in some circles is: So what? The new federal policy applies only to fertility clinic "leftovers" that would die and be thrown away. Why not destroy them for research?

The problem: Embryos are human beings.

That's what motivated Shinya Yamanaka to become the first to produce induced pluripotent stem cells by genetically reprogramming a regular body cell into a cell with the same properties as an embryonic stem cell. After looking at an embryo through a microscope and realizing "there was such a small difference between it and my daughters," Yamanaka decided that "we can't keep destroying embryos for our research."

There is no dispute over the scientific fact that an embryo is the beginning of human life - a living, developing organism, not a clump of cells. There is a difference of opinion on how we should treat this life.

We have inalienable human rights that don't depend on whether someone is "wanted." Nobody has the right to deny embryos what they need to live and then offer them up as fodder for research. Let embryos be adopted or die a natural, dignified death. Don't treat them as raw material for lethal medical experimentation.

Another problem: Where does embryo-destructive research want to go? "Just give us the fertility clinic leftovers" is a ruse to get people comfortable with the idea of destroying embryos for research. Then it will be easier to escalate into systematic production and destruction of embryos.

A week after Obama's executive order, The New York Times urged him to go farther and authorize cloning for production of embryos to be destroyed for stem cell research. That's the true agenda.

None of this is necessary. Stem cell research had advancing dramatically without reliance on embryo destruction.

When Ian Wilmut, cloner of Dolly the sheep, learned that pluripotent stem cells had been produced by genetic reprogramming, he declared obsolete the effort to clone and destroy embryos. ("Dolly creator Prof. Ian Wilmut shuns cloning," London Telegraph, Nov. 10, 2008) He said genetic reprogramming was easier and more efficient than harvesting stem cells from embryos and avoided the ethical problem.

Wilmut and Yamanaka have said nice things about the change in federal policy. What are they going to do? Criticize the president of the United States for broadening funding for research they have endorsed?

But look what they are doing with their careers. They are moving away from research based on embryo destruction.

The exodus includes James Thomson, a pioneer of HESC research who told the Times, "If human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough." After replicating Yamanaka's accomplishment of producing pluripotent stem cells, Thomson said about embryo-destructive research, "Isn't it great to start a field and then end it?"

The Nebraska Coalition for Ethical Research is not in the habit of citing the "Oprah Winfrey Show," but Google "oz stem cell oprah" and watch Dr. Mehmet Oz, a surgeon from Columbia University, use a human brain to explain to Michael J. Fox that this debate is "dead" because we no longer need to destroy embryos to get the desired cells.

And yet our state medical school keeps pushing for HESC research. Taxpayer-funded resources should go to what leading stem cell researchers say is the ethically and scientifically superior way to pursue stem cell research - producing pluripotent stem cells via genetic reprogramming.

Sheryl Pitner, M.D., is president of the Nebraska Coalition for Ethical Research.