Robert George, Eric Cohen: Stem Cell Research Newly Politicized

Of course, a big deal was made of the President's re-funding of embryonic stem cell research, and the notion that he was reversing an anti-science Bush policy.  A local news reporter was beaming as she explained the potential miracle and life-saving cures, that, ahem, researchers admit might be years and years down the road. But she didn't note that embryonic stem cells have flopped, big time, as sources of cures, while there are already in place many therapies that actually work from adult stem cells. That would have ruined to celebratory mood of the party at which visions of miracles dance in the heads of the believers.

We would dare not "politicize science," we were told, like Bush did. Robert P. George and Eric Cohen respond today in the Wall Street Journal. An excerpt:

First, the Obama policy is itself blatantly political. It is red meat to his Bush-hating base, yet pays no more than lip service to recent scientific breakthroughs that make possible the production of cells that are biologically equivalent to embryonic stem cells without the need to create or kill human embryos. Inexplicably -- apart from political motivations -- Mr. Obama revoked not only the Bush restrictions on embryo destructive research funding, but also the 2007 executive order that encourages the National Institutes of Health to explore non-embryo-destructive sources of stem cells.

Second and more fundamentally, the claim about taking politics out of science is in the deepest sense antidemocratic. The question of whether to destroy human embryos for research purposes is not fundamentally a scientific question; it is a moral and civic question about the proper uses, ambitions and limits of science. It is a question about how we will treat members of the human family at the very dawn of life; about our willingness to seek alternative paths to medical progress that respect human dignity.

Read the whole article here. The press's spin  that Obama is pro-science and is opening the door to healings that Bush closed is simply false, misleading, and, well, pretty political.

Comments

[Benighted Savage]

How is it that such a large segment of our society has become so bloodthirsty? It's almost as if many experience some deep discomfort unless they know that somehow, somewhere a baby is being butchered.

[Kamilla]

Hunh. So the President who "politicized" ESC research had a Bioethics Council of the broadest scope of any President. On the other hand, the President who pretends to bow to science over ideology doesn't even bother to consult his Bioethics Council (according to Dr. George on the radio last night), nor does he seek to rid the council of those awful, awful ideologues like Dr. George . . .

I don't get it.

Kamilla

[Michael]

Kamilla--

It's because Obama wasn't trying to please diverse members of an ethics council, so he wasn't playing politics to a bunch of people. He was just following his own party platform conscience, and there's nothing political about that.

Right?

[Patrcia M Godfrey]

"It forces American taxpayers, including those who see the deliberate taking of human life in the embryonic stage as profoundly unjust, to be complicit in this practice."

And makes some of us wonder if we do not have a moral obligation to refuse to pay taxes, knowing our money will be going to fund this abomination?