A Bush First
Yesterday President Bush signed the first veto of his administration, and it was a good one.
President Bush issued the first veto of his five-year-old administration yesterday, rejecting Congress's bid to lift funding restrictions on human embryonic stem cell research and underscoring his party's split on an emotional issue in this fall's elections.
...The vetoed bill "would support the taking of innocent human life in the hope of finding medical benefits for others," the president said, as babies cooed and cried behind him. "It crosses a moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect." Each child on the stage, he said, "began his or her life as a frozen embryo that was created for in vitro fertilization but remained unused after the fertility treatments were complete. . . . These boys and girls are not spare parts."
Opponents lament Bush's move, saying that it blocks "life-saving research." But the president is not blocking the research; state funds and backing from the private sector are still allowed under the law. The veto only prevents federal tax dollars from going towards embryonic stem cell research.
Besides, it has not yet been established that stem cells will cure ailments such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer’s, ALS and paralysis. So far, findings have been inconclusive.
Largely overlooked is the president's signing a bill into law that backs adult stem cell research. Researchers have been able to derive stem cells from bone marrow, white blood cells, dental pulp from baby teeth, the umbilical cord, amniotic fluid, the placenta, the nose, hormones excreted from the thyroid and liver, white matter in the brain, the small intestine, and the spleen. None of these extractions require that we experiment on defenseless, unborn living beings, as do those of the embryonic type.
The successes regarding adult stem cell research are largely ignored. Despite the presence of exciting alternatives, most people seem comfortable with ethical inconsistency, wanting to destroy human life in order to save it.
But what about all those frozen embryos that are no longer wanted by their parents? Certainly there is a better choice than experimenting on them. How about snowflake adoptions?
