Set-back for stem cell research
To the surprise of no one, President Bush yesterday vetoed a billl sent to him by Congress that would have allowed federal medical research dollars to be spent on establishing new lines of stem cells from frozen human embryos that would otherwise be discarded by fertilization clinics. Why do these extra embryos exist? In vitro fertilization doesn't always work on the first try, so several embryos are typically created. The ones at issue here are leftovers. No one has ever seriously proposed banning this practice because it would condemn many couples to childlessness who otherwise might be helped. One-day-old embryos have no consciousness. Using them for medical research and the possibility of saving many lives down the road is not considered wrong by all theologians.
The President created this problem in 2001 when he ruled that federal dollars--without which little serious medical research is accomplished--could only be spent on existing stem cell lines. These were said to number 67, but turned out to number only about 22, and many of these were useless for medical research because of cross-contamination by mouse genes. His action brought embryonic stem cell research in the U.S. almost to a halt, although it continues at full throttle in places like England, Singapore, and California, which created a state funding program to get around the Bush blockade.
I suspect in 40-50 years, when all the truth about Bush has been revealed, we'll learn that he knew all along that he was writing a death sentence for one of the most promising medical advances to come along in decades. The veto yesterday was for the religious right, a sop to their disappointment at his inability to deliver on flag-burning and gay marriage. At the veto ceremony, he surrounded himself with a couple of dozen couples who have adopted so-called "snowflake babies" raised from frozen embryos. I'm glad they did that, but adoption isn't going to save all those frozen day-old embryos. The parents whose eggs and sperms created them aren't about to casually let them be adopted by wingnuts. Or liberals, for that matter. It's a highly personal thing.
Bush put his veto signature on the bill in private, with no cameras present that could create a tape loop to be replayed endlessly in the fall campaign to send Republican congressmen and senators to electoral hell. The ceremony with the parents and the "snowflake babies" was held afterward. It was a shameless display of political pandering that will hurt real people--those who might have been saved if stem cell remedies for a host of dread diseases had been developed sooner. A veto override attempt will probably fail, and I predict that some legislators who voted for the bill will now vote against override to appease the religious right.
Just another day in the Eight Lost Years in America.
Postscript: U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., who is up for re-election this year, stands to be a big loser from the veto. Yesterday, the House failed to pass a bill introduced by Santorum to require the National Institutes of Health to fund research into adult stem cell research. According to AP, some Democrats didn't want to give Santorum and other conservatives the political cover this bill was intended to provide. Adult stem cells are not taken from embryos but don't have the same ability to morph themselves into things like new kidneys, etc., that embryonic stem cells are believed to have. The religious right has held out adult stem cells as a supposed moral substitute for embryonic stem cells, but if you buy this argument, you are giving up most of the promise of embryonic stem cells to achieve medical marvels. It isn't even half a loaf.