Embryonic stem-cell research proponents promise more than the science can deliver, a stem-cell expert for the Family Research Council told a Rapid City audience Wednesday.

“Ethical debate aside, with embryonic stem cells, as well as with cloning, there’s nothing there,” said biochemist David Prentice, who was in town to help the South Dakota Family Policy Council fight efforts to overturn the state’s prohibition against embryonic research.

South Dakotans for Lifesaving Cures wants to end a ban on embryonic stem-cell research in the state, but has yet to launch a promised petition drive.

On Wednesday, a spokesman said the group is still working on the language for an initiated measure that may or may not materialize in 2010.

“The folks involved with South Dakotans for Lifesaving Cures are currently working to finalize language and make a final determination of whether they will seek a ballot measure for 2010 or pursue a legislative strategy for the 2010 session,” group spokesman Nathan Peterson said.

More than 200 people turned out to hear Prentice speak Wednesday at Bible Fellowship Church. The size of the audience was twice the usual attendance at the monthly South Dakota Family Policy Council luncheon, and it was a reflection of the interest in the issue being generated by the possible ballot initiative, the Rev. Dale Bartscher said. Bartscher is director of pastoral ministries for the council.

His organization will fight either of those efforts with its own campaign, Coalition for Cures not Cloning, which Prentice was in South Dakota to promote this week. In addition to the public luncheon Wednesday, he met privately with a group of local physicians. He is also scheduled to address physicians throughout the Avera Health System, a Catholic-affiliated institution, later this week.

Prentice has a doctorate in biochemistry and has served as senior fellow of life sciences for the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C., since 2004. He is a founding member of Do No Harm: The Coalition of Americans for Research Ethics, which says the destruction of an embryo in stem-cell research is the taking of a human life. He also believes the medical promises of embryonic research are overblown and come at the expense of more promising clinical treatments from adult stem-cell research. Medical patients will benefit far sooner from adult stem-cell research than embryonic research, he said.

“People need to understand that there have been no medical benefits from embryonic (stem-cell research) and it doesn’t look like there’ll be anything in the near future, while that has already been achieved with adult stem cells for virtually every one of the diseases that’s mentioned in terms of the embryonic,” Prentice said. “No human being has ever been injected with embryonic stem cells.”

Adult stem cells are already treating thousands of patients, without any of the moral problems of destroying days-old embryos, he said.

Peterson said Prentice’s claims about existing treatments from adult stem cells is overblown, citing a criticism of Prentice that was published in a 2006 edition of the journal Science.

South Dakotans for Lifesaving Cures wants to see research advances with both embryonic and adult stem cells. The group’s mission statement supports embryonic research, but not reproductive cloning, because of its potential to yield better treatments and lifesaving cures for multiple sclerosis, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, spinal cord and traumatic brain injuries, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease and others.

Prentice argues that, given current federal government deficits, focusing limited federal funds on adult stem-cell research is smarter fiscal policy.