July 19, 2006
"This bill would support the taking of innocent human life in the hope of finding medical benefits for others," Bush, speaking at the White House, said after he followed through on his promise to veto the bill. "It crosses a moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect. So I vetoed it."
In it's reporting, the Washington Post couldn't help but jump at the chance to make a charge it couldn't actually support:
Such research is controversial because it holds the promise of finding cures for major diseases, such as Parkinson's, but requires destroying human embryos to extract the cells.
The reality of the matter is that embryonic stem cell research hasn't been able to get past a single fundamental hurdle that of unrestricted cell division, so that "promise" is nothing but a pipe dream.
Wikipedia reminds of what many of us forgot since high school:
Cell division is the biological basis of life. For simple unicellular organisms such as the Amoeba, one cell division reproduces an entire organism. On a larger scale, cell division can create progeny from multicellular organisms, such as plants that grow from cuttings. But most importantly, cell division enables sexually reproducing organisms to develop from the one-celled zygote, which itself was produced by cell division from gametes. And after growth, cell division allows for continual renewal and repair of the organism.
But cell division must be regulated by the body, and a great deal of the genetic code we carry makes sure that growth is regulated and eventually terminated.
Embryonic stem cells, as I stated before, have a problem with unrestricted cell division.
There is another name for that problem, and many scientists seem to agree that it could take a decade or longer to fix that problem in embryonic stem cell research, if it is ever fixed at all.
Frankly, I'm with the President on this one: I'm against killing human embryos to create cancer, when adult stems cells are already clinically proven to work.
Update: As if cued up for a comic relief, the reliably clueless Oliver Willis writes a breathless post, The Republican Culture of Ignorance and Death, where he repeatedly accuses the president of banning "stem cell research," conflating the two quite different lines of research into one. Of course, this is simply not the case.
In addition, Bush didn't ban any research whatsoever, he merely banned the federal funding of dubious embryonic research. Bush actually increased federal funding of stem cells obtained from adults, umbilical cords, placentas and animals during his presidency.
Once again, Willis shows that the culture of "ignorance and death" is assuredly his own.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at
03:16 PM
| Comments (10)
| Add Comment
Post contains 468 words, total size 3 kb.
Posted by: Stormy70 at July 19, 2006 05:50 PM (YRPBe)
Posted by: Stormy70 at July 19, 2006 05:51 PM (YRPBe)
Posted by: Steve at July 19, 2006 06:11 PM (Xq0Cz)
Posted by: Johnny at July 19, 2006 07:51 PM (Vtwo9)
Posted by: lawhawk at July 19, 2006 08:00 PM (6nwe7)
Posted by: PoliticalCritic at July 19, 2006 09:40 PM (1nHnP)
Posted by: Scrapiron at July 19, 2006 11:05 PM (y6n8O)
Posted by: wickedpinto at July 19, 2006 11:53 PM (QTv8u)
Posted by: muckdog at July 20, 2006 06:25 PM (dE5CK)
Posted by: Jim at July 20, 2006 06:42 PM (q/kR+)
54 queries taking 0.0636 seconds, 161 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.