Regular readers of this site… wait. How can there be regular readers of this site when there aren’t even regular posts to this site. (Sigh).
I installed an RSS newsreader a while back — Awasu, which I like except that my pop-up blockers don’t seem to work with it — and have been spending a good bit of time reading other people’s blogs. For political info around the Seattle area, I like to read Sound Politics (conservative), Postman on Politics (Seattle Times political columnist), and lately The Left Shue (liberal). Well, actually, the subtitle of Chad Shue’s blog is “An Outlet for Progressives Who Are Working for Change,” so I don’t know that he’d care for the “liberal” label. I disagree with Chad on, well, pretty much every post I read there, but his responses to my comments have been pretty civil. (I mentioned Chad’s blog before here.) We seem to be able to disagree agreeably.
Anyway, I mention all this because I’ve been writing more in comments on other blogs and in posts on my own. So, I’m going to start bringing more of that content back here. We call this “repurposing”. Without further ado…
On July 29, Chad posted the comments of my new Congressman, Jay Inslee (WA-1, D), on the occasion of his voting to override the President’s veto on expanding the funding for embryonic stem cell research. Inslee’s remarks, given on the floor of the House, July 20:
“Mr. Speaker, when I voted to override President Bush’s veto of stem cell research, I was thinking of ex-Governor Booth Gardner of Washington State. I saw Governor Gardner in the Sea-Tac Airport Monday as I was flying back here. He was flying to San Francisco for advanced treatment for Parkinson’s, a disease he has been battling for some time with great courage and grace.
And yet this promising research, we have a President who decided he is not going to let Americans have because he, from his exalted realm on Pennsylvania Avenue, has taken it upon himself to dictate to Americans what our morals should be.
Let me suggest that the President who started the war in Iraq based on false information, the President that mishandled Hurricane Katrina relief, the President who has created the largest deficit in the history of the solar system, is not entitled by any law, religion, morality, ethics or common sense to dictate to the American people one sense of morality, much less any others.
It was wrong for him to deny Booth Gardner treatment, it was wrong for him to take it away from millions of Americans.”
As it happens, I support using embryos created during in vitro fertilization, which would otherwise be discarded, for stem cell research. Creating embryos specifically for research is ethically complicated, and it seems entirely appropriate to me to prohibit federal funding for such research. (Actually, I cast a skeptical eye at federal funding for just about anything other than national defense and the justice system, but that’s a topic for another day.)
My comments:
Just wanted to add a few points for you to ponder on your consideration of embryonic stem cell research.
It’s important for you to remember that the Bush Administration has never banned research on embryonic stem cells. According to the Wikipedia, a research panel from the National Institute of Health recommended federal funding for research on human embryos in 1995. Their recommendation covered funding both for research on embryos specifically created for research and for embryos that had been left over from in-vitro fertilization. The Clinton Administration decided in favor of the former, but against the latter, citing ethical and moral concerns. Congress intervened and shut down all federal funding for research that would involve the destruction of human embryos.
The Clinton Administration reconsidered the issue in 1998 after privately-funded research discovered human embryonic stem cells (hESC). They decided that research could be done on embryos that were created for in-vitro fertilization, but were going to be discarded. The Department of Health and Human Services came up with guidelines for this research in 2001. Implementation of the guidelines was delayed so that the new Bush Administration could review them.
Here’s the part that often gets overlooked in the argument: the Bush Administration approved federal funding under these circumstances. It allowed funding for then-existing lines of stem cells. This was the first federal funding ever allowed on this kind of research. The President’s recent veto, then, did not change that funding, it only prevented additional funding for the purpose of creating more stem cell lines, which would necessitate the destruction of additional embryos.
The key line from the Wikipedia article is this: “Neither Congress nor any administration has ever prohibited private funding of embryonic research.”
In addition, lots of great and promising research is being done with adult stem cells, which don’t have restrictions on them at all.
Sometimes, it seems to me that your progressive side of the street thinks nothing can be accomplished without the government spending some money. But there is a great deal of progress being made, both with and without federal dollars.
