Hypocritic Oath

1 August 2005



Senator Frist Changes Mind on Stem Cell Funding

Washington, DC has a very corrosive climate for people with integrity. It gets under the skin and eats away at things like principle, knowledge and wisdom. Senator Bill Frist (R-TN) came to the Senate with the respect of this journal as a man of science. He has since proved that he is politically inept, and his recent reversal of his reversal on stem cell research and its funding has sent his stock to new depths.

As a man of science and surgeon, Senator Frist took an oath a long time ago, penned by Hippocrates, that begins “First do no harm.” It is difficult to reconcile his twisting and turning with this solemn undertaking. When the president came out with his “policy” on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, few who took a moral view of the rules noted that it is inconsistent, and therefore, inherently unethical.

The president said that federal funding for such research would only proceed for a few stem cell lines on the grounds that they were already in use and that no more lines should be established. Politically, that may be palatable to some, but the president’s approach was a moral one. Either American taxpayers shouldn’t fund the research of scientists that use stem cells from human embryos, or they should. Honest people can differ over this, although American taxpayers are forced to fund all sorts of things they don’t like morally (an illegal war in Iraq springs to mind). What is unethical is to say some lines can be used while others can’t. If a human life is destroyed in creating these lines, it is ethically wrong to say, “but since it’s destroyed already, let’s use it.” Someone, somewhere had to commit an act of evil (if one accepts this incorrect line of reasoning), and those engaged research based on it are morally no different than those who do research on brand new lines.

Of course, Washington is not the place for people to have serious discussions about immorality and ethics. It is, after all, a place of politics where the “possible” is what counts, not the “desirable.” So Senator Frist first backed the president’s muddled thinking (deciding to go along to get along), and now he has said he wants to reconsider the funding of such research. Were his decision to reconsider based on new data or new reasoning based in science, one would applaud him for learning and changing his view in light of new evidence. But no, he merely is trying to find a place that is comfortable for a presidential run – one far enough to the right to get the rabid minority of anti-research zealots to help win the GOP’s nomination but to the center enough to win the general election that follows. There are no new facts he cited in his change of mind.

The saddest part of all is the response from those who prefer watching those already born suffer needlessly from disease and deformity to doing research on human cells that scientifically cannot ever become a person. They are howling for the senator’s blood and calling him a Judas. That should make his presidential run harder – which is a good thing. The only thing more despicable than a politician posing as a moralist is one who does it badly.



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


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