Aggregated News

LANSING, Mich. -- A television ad created by opponents of a ballot measure that would allow embryonic stem-cell research in Michigan likens such work to the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study.

The ad, which began running Tuesday in the Detroit, Flint, and Saginaw areas, shows newspaper headlines and other references to the Tuskegee study.

In the study by the U.S. Public Health Service in Tuskegee, Ala., poor, black men with syphilis weren't told they had the disease and were denied treatment when penicillin became available in the 1940s. The widely criticized study ended in 1972.

Proposal 2 on the November ballot would change the state constitution to allow people to donate embryos left over from fertility treatments for scientific research.

"Unfortunately, unrestricted science has had an ugly past," the announcer warns, "and it's been unfairly applied to the vulnerable and minorities. Proponents of Proposal 2 are now seeking the right to conduct unregulated scientific experimentation on live human embryos. They say they'll have oversight and follow federal restrictions. But the problem is, there are none. Research without restrictions? Too much room...