A Wave of Good News
Posted by Rebecca Teti in News on Thursday, September 25, 2008 6:37 PM
We win.
That, according to a friend highly placed in the field of bioethics, is the significance of this story from this morning’s Washington Post.
After The Turning Tide, I didn’t expect to talk about stem cells again so soon, but who could resist such good news?
Scientists are reporting today that they have overcome a major obstacle to using a promising alternative to embryonic stem cells, bolstering the prospects for bypassing the political and ethical tempest that has embroiled hopes for a new generation of medical treatments.
The researchers said they found a safe way to coax adult cells to regress into an embryonic state, alleviating what had been the most worrisome uncertainty about developing the cells into potential cures.
According to my source, if scientists can find a way to make the cells proliferate more swiftly (which everyone expects them to be able to do), “we may have crossed the finish line.”
Say some prayers for the swift success of this line of research won’t you?
On another note—and at the risk of annoying those who dislike hearing anything nice about the President—I have to note that we owe this impending pro-life victory in great part to President Bush. On August 9, 2001, in the first major policy speech of his presidency—before September 11 overshadowed everything—he addressed the nation on the topic of embryonic stem cell research. It’s well worth reading and reminding ourselves what he said then.
His solomonic ruling was to permit government funds to be used only for research done with existing cell lines—an ethically acceptable position. He took a lot of hits for it. On one side of our politics he has been denounced as a neanderthal hater of Science ever since. Most pro-lifers criticized him at the time, too—for not banning the research outright.
But they’d overlooked the fact that on the evening he gave his speech, a bill was moving through Congress with a veto-proof majority that would have given us unlimited federally-funded embryonic stem cell research. If the President had simply banned federal funding, the bill would have passed over his veto. By allowing some morally permissable research to go forward, the President peeled enough support away from the bad bill to be able to defeat it with his veto.
Of course, he never had any authority or control over the private sector, but he spared this nation eight years of government complicity in funding those nightmarish experiments. He bought us eight years of time in which to make pro-life breakthroughs such as the one announced today—breakthroughs which may indeed mean, “we win.”
For that, I am very grateful to him.
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