Mixing religious doctrine and public policy is bad medicine
If President Bush casts the first veto of his presidency over the stem cell bill passed Tuesday by the U.S. House, he will have made a powerful and troubling statement to the American people -- that his religion trumps everyone's science.
A religious leader is perfectly within his or her rights to believe that religion trumps science. An Iranian ayatollah is expected to make decisions of governance based on his interpretation of religious law. And certainly any president of the United States should have a moral compass that guides him in leading the nation.
But President Bush's belief that embryonic cells represent a life form that should be afforded the same legal protection as a child is outside the belief system of many established religions in the United States. Most Americans, given the facts of embryonic stem cell research, support it. It offers enormous potential in curing diseases that could affect men, women and children in any family.
Fuzzy image
The president attempted to cloud the issue with a Washington photo session in which he was surrounded by children who were produced from surplus fertilized eggs from fertility clinics. The president's message was that other such fertilized eggs would be destroyed if used in stem cell research.
Unsaid but undeniable is this fact: Eventually tens of thousands of unfertilized eggs will be destroyed in any case. Thousands are routinely destroyed now.
The eggs are produced by or for couples who are unable to conceive children in the traditional way. In the interest of efficiency, many more eggs are fertilized than most couples would ever use. The unused eggs are frozen.
There are now more than 400,000 such eggs in storage. If some couples want to give those eggs up for "adoption" by other couples, that's fine. If other couples are convinced they will never need their fertilized eggs and want them destroyed, that is their right. And if other couples consent to have their eggs used to produced stem cell lines that could be used to cure diseases, that should be their right, and the government should not be prohibited from funding important research using those eggs.
These are microscopic days-old embryos with no visible human characteristics, no consciousness and no potential to develop into a child unless implanted in a woman.
When does life begin?
They qualify as "life" only under a conservative religious doctrine found in the United States primarily among evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics. President Bush would use a veto to enforce that particular religious belief because, as he said the other day, "the use of federal dollars to destroy life is something I simply do not support."
Embryonic stem cells, which can develop into any type of cell in the body and thus rebuild destroyed or damaged organs, tissue and nerves, hold great promise for treating juvenile diabetes, spinal injuries and degenerative diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's (former first lady Nancy Reagan backs stem cell research). Success is far from assured, but it is a promising avenue.
Most Americans recognize this and have no moral qualms about pursuing stem cell research. And most Americans would prefer to see this research done in the United States. The ban on stem cell research put in place by President Bush in August 2001 has stifled research here and is driving American researchers to Europe and Asia.
A few states are attempting to keep research in the United States by funding their own research programs, but only the federal government has the ability to underwrite meaningful research.
This nation should not be prepared to relinquish its pre-eminent position in the area of medical research on narrow religious doctrine.