Embryonic stem cell work hasn't been banned
I don't know if utilizing embryonic stem cells for medical research is "destruction of life." I'll leave that to others to debate.
However, I do know that the veto issued by President Bush only denied federal funding of said research. It did not ban or halt the research itself.
I also have a very simple answer for ash, who asked, "What about those of us who do support the research?"
If you believe so strongly in your position, I would suggest taking out your checkbook and writing a check. People have been doing it for decades.
ash replies:
I read on the editorial page that someone has asked me an irrelevant question (again). This one amounts to why I don't put my money where my mouth is since the federal government declines to serve one of its functions.
See how biased questions can be? It's a tricky business avoiding one based on a premise the answerer may reject.
Never mind. This presents me with another opportunity to reiterate my support for embryonic stem cell research, the promise of which will never fully be realized without funding from many sources, though the country's richest financial resource would certainly accelerate the process.
Naysayers notwithstanding, the medical application of these flexible cells is a burgeoning scientific breakthrough. It is also another inevitability destined to override pesky speed bumps erected by religious objectors, including here in Bible Belt North.
It is as inexorable as the sheer will that culminated in the triumph of emancipation, suffrage, civil rights, gay union (yes, live long enough and that will come to pass as well), and now this. Since no one will stop it (nor, in time, will there be any significant effort to do so), the only pertinent question is whether to take advantage of it once it becomes available as a result of current experimentation in its rudimentary form.
As dramatic as movements may be, bursting into legality like the pop of a very large bubble, eventually they become unremarkable. When was the last time your head jerked at an African-American in a business suit, a woman in a voting booth, a mixed-race couple, an integrated classroom?
While always extraordinary in the breath and depth of their potential, stem cell treatments shall one day be as commonplace and acceptable as similar societal advancements.
• This is 'societal advancement'?
ash compares embryonic stem cell treatment to equal rights.
She wrote, "When was the last time your head jerked at an African-American in a business suit, a woman in a voting booth, a mixed-race couple, an integrated classroom? ... Stem cell treatment shall one day be as commonplace and acceptable as similar societal advancements."
To make my own comparison to equal rights and embryonic stem cell treatment, I must say the unborn are none lower than the disabled. They both have a right to live. If we can save somebody without killing somebody else, I hope that we will do it.
But I also hope that there will never come a time when murder is a "societal advancement."
Curtis Penfold, Divernon
Lordy. In addition to a fertilized egg in the mother’s womb constituting a full-fledged human being – with all the protections thereof – now, according to a recent letter, so do a clump of cells frozen in perpetuity.
Meanwhile, Mr. Bush’s Press Secretary, Tony Snow, has backtracked since his report that Bush considers embryonic stem cell research tantamount to murder. It seems the White House Chief of Staff, Josh Bolten, was put in a rather uncomfortable position during his appearance on Meet the Press when asked either to affirm or denounce Mr. Bush’s hyperbolic declaration. Fancy that; the very next day Mr. Snow was forced to beat a hasty retreat from the startling language.
Yet apparently some local Bush supporters never received the memo (“ix-nay on the urder-may”). We in the Midwest are often the last to know.