By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS Staff Journalist The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) has awarded the top prize to a blasphemous poem that mocks Jesus' words "This is my body" in an October 6 "Stem Cell Awareness Day" poetry contest. According to a press release from the Life Legal Defense Foundation (LLDF), the prize-winning poem by Tyson Anderson begins "This is my body which is given for you" and ends, "Take this in remembrance of me." "The choice of this poem for a prize represents the deliberate pilfering of the holiest of voluntary, sacrificial acts in the history of humanity for a shoddy pep piece in CIRM's campaign to promote the wholesale destruction of human life," writes the LLDF. "As if squandering taxpayer money on propaganda to promote 'Stem Cell Awareness Day' were not enough, CIRM is bent on mocking the most sacred of Christian text." However, as the LLDF points out, the poem inadvertently acknowledges the personhood of the embryos that are otherwise treated as nothing more than objects from which to harvest pluripotent stem cells. "The poem's premise is that the embryo is a person wishing to give its life. But why should we assume that the embryo is saying, 'Let me help,' rather than 'Let me live'?" asks LLDF President Dana Cody. "Are these scientists attempting to assuage their guilt over their exploitation of and experimentation on unconsenting human subjects by telling themselves that the victims really want to give up their lives?" By rewarding these poems, CIRM has cavalierly declared the humanity of these embryos, the LLDF asserts. "And yet it continues to attempt to justify their wholesale destruction in a headlong quest for 'cures' and 'hope,' while largely ignoring the ethical alternatives that exist through full funding for ethical and successful adult stem cell therapies."   © All Rights Reserved, Living His Life Abundantly®/Women of Grace®  http://www.womenofgrace.com