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Bush's Deadly Blunder
Meanwhile, large majorities of voters and their representatives in Congress support federal funding but could not muster the two-thirds vote needed to override the Bush veto. But the political landscape has been changing.
Barack Obama has long been a vocal proponent of embryonic stem cell research, voting in favor of it when he was in the Illinois legislature. He continued to support it as a U.S. Senator, where he joined 40 of his colleagues to support federal funding. As he said in his supportive speech:
This bill embodies the innovative thinking that we as a society demand and medical advancement requires. By expanding scientific access to embryonic stem cells which would be otherwise discarded, this bill will help our nation’s scientists and researchers develop treatments and cures to help people who suffer illnesses and injuries for which there are currently none.
John McCain voted for federal funding in 2007, thundering about thousands of frozen embryos. But during his successful run in the 2008 primaries, McCain, for obvious reasons, muted his support for the research with conditions, saying in answer to a questionnaire from a group of scientists that “clear lines should be drawn that reflect a refusal to sacrifice moral value and ethical principles for scientific progress.”
Obama is now president-elect. He has promised to issue an executive order that will cancel Bush’s 2001 order blocking federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. But how much damage has Bush already caused in the inevitable march toward stem cell therapy? The United States has the best scientific infrastructure in the world, and he probably has inhibited scientific work somewhat by blocking federal funding. Bush may have discouraged some of the best graduate students from going into the stem cell research field. He certainly has earned himself a footnote in the history of science for doing what he could to block medical progress for political and religious reasons.
In that respect, he joins the Catholic Natural Law advocates in the Vatican who sought to ban smallpox vaccination on the grounds that it is unnatural to mix human blood with cow serum.
All of this deserves a fifth book added to the four of Alexander Pope’s Dunciad.
Jeffrey Hart is professor emeritus of English at Dartmouth College. He wrote for the National Review for more than three decades, where he was senior editor. He wrote speeches for Ronald Reagan, when governor of California, and for Richard Nixon.
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Jeffrey Hart is professor emeritus of English at Dartmouth College. He wrote for the National Review for more than three decades, where he was senior editor. He wrote speeches for Ronald Reagan while he was governor of California, and for Richard Nixon.
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Jeffrey Hart is professor emeritus of English at Dartmouth College. He wrote for the National Review for more than three decades, where he was senior editor. He wrote speeches for Ronald Reagan while he was governor of California, and for Richard Nixon.
The Christian Party
Jeffrey Hart is professor emeritus of English at Dartmouth College. He wrote for the National Review for more than three decades, where he was senior editor. He wrote speeches for Ronald Reagan while he was governor of California, and for Richard Nixon.
Thank god for the independent drive of true scientists. Now we can get back to all that subversive fruit fly research Sarah Palin ridiculed ....
The Hypocrisy of a man that will block the developement of a life giving science to save a few hundred blastocytes and force a nation to kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqis by lying is horrifying.
Why are we letting any church drive government decisions?
What is it with these religious fanatics that they will support a man that brings America to it's financial knees while promoting the killing of hundreds of thousands because he will block stem cell research on religious moral grounds (that are murky at best)?
Why did the Republican party dominators let a small group of religious fanatics dictate terms to their party, this reeks of the same stench as the Taliban influence in Afghanistan.
What happened to the party of Abraham Lincoln over the last 4 decades that it should be attempting to bring religious politics into the policy and law of our American Government?
Mr. Hart is ignorant or a liar.
Bush was the 1st president to fund human embryonic stem cell research. During his presidency almost $1/2 federal dollars went just to that - 20x what went to cord blood studies, and cord blood has been shown to be used therapeutically for repair, drug/gene transport and even organ creation!
Embryonic stem cell research is legal in the US with NO restrictions. Unlike most other countries, you can make embryos for research and attempt to clone (I say attempt becasue it doesn't work in people for biological reasons unique to them).
Bush worked within the frame of the Dickey Amendment given him by President Clinton, which prohibits funding research that destroys a human life.
He even issued executive order 13435 to fast-track funding for what might be held up under Dickey, like arrested embryos and parthenotes.
Mr. Hart's ignorance extends to what stem cells can and are doing.
Diabetes - Type 2 ... 85% subjects off insulin after a transplant using their own stem cells. Similar results were were reported Ap.'07 JAMA for T1. Being an autoimmune disease, embryonic couldn't help T1.
Parkinson's: Animals had functional recovery using both 'embryonic from skin' and their own stem cells. They also had it with embryonic, but then 100% developed brain cancer within 10 wks. Neither of the other two sources had the same complication.
Alzheimer's is a whole brain disease. No right-minded researcher thinks embryonic can help because they are only cut/replace therapies. Granny won't survive the surgery, let alone remember you after you do that much brain damage to 'fix' her. (Conversely, a nasal spray/vaccine is in development to blow out the placques with minor damage replacement via the brain's existing stem cells ... the regrowth allows memory restoration.)
'Embryonic stem cells cannot be used directly in therapy because they cause cancer' - Scientific American.
Playing in a jar is not the same as using therapeutically, and NONE of the forementioned countries are using embyronic therapeutically because they are too dangerous. They cause cancer and are rejected by the subjects.
Now we have Obama, the false hopes and empty promises of embryonic will be obvious.
It seems to me that there is a significant difference between trying to thwart stem cell research and providing federal funds for that research. No matter what Bush did, stem cell research was going to continue, as it did. Was progress toward solutions slowed dramatically by lack of federal research funds? Probably not! Was a political promise kept to a large segment of the American people? Without a doubt!
Who knows how many lives have been lost or impacted adveresely by this ignorance created out of idolatry. We as a race can only hope that logic, common sense, and rational thought somehow continue to win out over fairy tales and superstition.
The superficiality of this article reminds us that English professors should not write about science they do not understand. Professor Hart apparently does not know the stem cell question is now essentially dead, because (as evangelicals and Catholics predicted) scientists have developed a way to use adult somatic cells to become embryonic cells. He glosses over this in the article, but fails to recognize its moral implications: we don't need to create embryos to work with cells as good as those from embryos.
Professor Hart clearly lives in a world of transparent moral binaries, in which the public discourse on stem cells can be divided into two clear groups: evangelicals/ Catholics "against" it and enlightened progressive people "for" it. Of course, many people "against" stem cell research are actually only opposed to embryonic stem cell research and to over-eager, naive, and scientistic hope in scientific progress.
The story as it will be told in the future and has already been told in an excellent article in First Things (November 2008) by Joseph Bottum and Ryan Anderson, will be that the search for a "third way" produced a viable alternative that prevented a "Brave New World"-like scenario. The story will not Professor Hart's triumphalist story of how Bush stood in the way of science. (Remember that President Clinton opposed both stem cell research and cloning and no one is telling the story of his anti-scientific agenda.)
The opening paragraph in this article says everything about what is wrong with current attitudes in the US. It should read
"One of Obama's first acts must be to overturn Bush's ignorant ban on federal funding for stem cell research. Then American scientists can *co-operate* with the rest of the world to cure life threatening illnesses."
But I guess given the author's resume, it isn't surprising that he should see the only way that the US can benefit is if it 'wins' and the rest of the world loses.
I think when life is need for such a research, because any person who has a diseased body and is dying from anything from cancer to aids needs stem cell research. A chance to see life on this earth and to enjoy it for a long as one could want to coninue on to love life and everyone within it is very important to me and anyone who feels the same way. Who cares where it comes from the point is that any loved one could survive a castrophic disease and walk out of a research facility to come back to his or her family and the world to live life to the fullest.That is what we all want in life is to live on and on thourgh the years and if possible forever to continue in life to love the world and everyone in it.
Thank you.
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