Bush Vows Stem Cell Veto

President Bush, who is a product of Yale and Harvard, knows almost nothing about science. But as a man of faith, he is confident he doesn’t need to know anything about it. Human cloning is morally evil, and therefore, US taxpayers’ funds won’t be used in research on human stem cells. And if that means people have to stay in wheelchairs, that’s God’s will. So the bill in Congress that would loosen the limitations Mr. Bush has placed on federal funding of such research faces a veto.

What sparked the latest Luddite outburst from the first president elected by the Know-Nothing Party is news from South Korea that scientists there (whose ethics rest on healing the sick rather than on acting pious every seventh day) have made a breakthrough in stem cell research. By taking an ova and implanting donor DNA, they have created blastocysts that would allow tissues (even organs some day) to be grown that are genetically identical to cells in the donor’s body – meaning no rejection risk.

Mr. Bush has said that any research that takes human life to cure other humans of their diseases is wrong, and he won’t permit taxpayers’ money to be used on immoral activities. One will resist the obvious immorality of spending $320 billion of taxpayer funds on the rat hole that is Iraq, and which most Americans don’t support. Instead, the argument moves onto the science of the procedure.

Mr. Bush and many like him argue that human life begins at conception, and while that is demonstrably wrong, one will stipulate that it is so for the sake of this argument. Conception is, of course, the fertilization of the ova by a sperm cell. But that is not what the Korean team has done. No spermatozoa enter into the process. The DNA implanted comes from the donor’s own body, and at no point can it develop into a human fetus. In other words, it isn't reproductive cloning.

Since human life beings at conception, and there is no conception, Mr. Bush would do well to reconsider his veto threat. More likely, this method of developing stem cells will prove impractical, requiring millions of egg cells to do anything therapeutically meaningful. But that is best left to the lab to prove, not for the Oval Office to determine to please Mr. Bush’s political base.


© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
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