This is in response to the letter from Almon F. Jordan III (Aug. 5). I agree that the citizens of Tennessee should give Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist payback. How about payback for a false and inappropriate diagnosis of Terri Schiavo?

But I disagree that support for embryonic stem cell research is “just plain awful.”

The majority of Americans support such research and it is up to our elected leaders to voice this support in Washington. Furthermore, the statement that embryos should only be fertilized by natural means is an insult to the millions of infertile couples in this country and the tens of thousands of children conceived outside a woman’s body. Dozens of children in our community have been conceived this way, mine included.

I would like to have a chance to donate embryos I could not use, with the hope that this research might help someone. The liberal “elites,” the media and Ted Kennedy have nothing to do with Sen. Frist’s decision. His country wants him to support that legislation.

Our representatives in Washington are trying to send a message to the president. We have to find a cure for so many awful diseases. The disease I have was cured with the medical miracle of in vitro fertilization. I only wish that stem cell research could have held a cure for the disease that took my mother before my child was born.

Kimberly Dyer, Lewiston