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National NewsConservative News
The President Shows the Courage of His Convictions
By Gary Palmer
Posted on: July 26, 2006
When it comes to complex moral issues, especially those involving science, it seems to me that the public prefers leaders with certainty.
When I say certainty, I am not talking about in-your-face dogmatism. The certainty that people desire in their leaders is more in the context of a voice of reason that speaks from sincere conviction about what is acceptable (right) and what is unacceptable (wrong). By vetoing, "The Stem Cell Research Act of 2005"(H.R. 810), a bill that would have forced taxpayers to pay for the destruction of human embryos, President Bush provided the American public with that degree of certainty of right and wrong that the people need in a leader.
That doesn't mean everyone agrees with him. After all, 19 Republican senators voted to use taxpayers' money to pay for the destruction of human embryos for scientific research. And, as the predictable vicious personal attacks from liberal Democrats prove, not everyone respects his convictions on this issue either.
Some polls show that the majority of Americans support human embryonic stem cell research in hopes that science will discover cures for some of our worst diseases. Nevertheless, I still believe that most people respect the President's deeply held moral convictions that taking human life, even in its most nascent stage, is ultimately not the way to advance science or humanity. Regardless of what the polls say, given that most of Americans are religious, and the vast majority of those are Christian, more than likely there is deep down a sense that President Bush is right. There are some things that we should not do even in the name of human progress or in an effort to alleviate human suffering.
Proponents of using taxpayers' money to destroy human embryos for use in scientific experiments argue that the President's veto is another example of fundamentalist religion inferring with scientific progress. Obviously, there is a long history in America of science being at odds with religion, but there is more to this than fundamentalism versus enlightened science. What is really at the center of this debate is money.
For instance, if all anyone read or listened to about stem cell research came from the mainstream media, most people would conclude that stem cell research is just about the only way we can ever find cures for many terrible diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.
Moreover, the public would also conclude that there is little embryonic stem cell research being done because there is no money to fund the research. The fact is, privately funded embryonic stem cell research is being done and has been done for some time; the President's veto only prohibits the use of taxpayer money to fund it.
But that is a huge problem for many scientists committed to human embryonic stem cell research because if the government doesn't fund their research, then they must raise private funding. According to Do No Harm: The Coalition of Americans for Research Ethics, to date, experiments using human embryos have not produced any benefits for treating humans. When programs fail to produce results, the private sector, unlike the government, does not continue to waste its money.
On the other hand, research using adult stem cells has produced 72 treatments for conditions ranging from cancer to neural disease to the treatment of injuries. In some cases, there have been astonishing breakthroughs.
For instance, scientists in London reported that they have repaired patients' damaged livers by using stem cells collected from the patients' own blood. Korean researchers reported that by injecting umbilical cord stem cells into a paraplegic's spine, the patient spine healed to the point that the patient is now able to walk again with the use of a walker. And a Harvard team of researchers has recently received FDA approval to begin clinical trials on patients with juvenile diabetes following their discovery that adult stem cells injected in mice could achieve permanent reversal of diabetes. Successful research such as this attracts investments and it explains why most of the private sector money is going into research using adult stem cells.
Then there is also a political aspect of this battle and, unfortunately, much of science has been taken over by politics. Whether it is stem cell research or global warming, science is being used to manipulate the public to advance political agendas.
The proof of this can be found in the fact that the liberal Democrats were able to block passage of another bill that would have provided $15 million dollars to fund stem cell research that does not involve destroying human embryos. This bill was passed unanimously by the U.S. Senate and had 273 votes in the House of Representatives, but a minority of liberals used procedural maneuvers to block it.
No doubt, many liberal Democrats concluded that killing this bill would keep Bush from using it to alleviate the political damage they hope will come from his veto of the embryonic stem cell bill.
But I believe they are wrong.
While some polls show that most Americans may not agree with the President's decision to veto H.R. 810, these polls also indicate that most Americans have some reservations about the federal government funding the destruction of human embryos. Consequently, I believe, when confronted with a moral dilemma such as this, the majority of Americans appreciate the fact that President Bush has the courage to stand up for his convictions. It is shame more of our elected officials do not have that kind of political courage.
Roe and Rot, December 18, 2005.
Words of Choice, November 10, 2005.
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