Investor's Business Daily, June 7th, 2007
Science: With the president sure to veto a bill expanding embryonic stem cell research, a new breakthrough should make the whole issue moot. But it won't stop Congress and presidential candidates from playing politics.
The newest legislation seeking to allow the destruction of human embryos for medical research purposes passed the House on Thursday with a strong, bipartisan 247-176 vote. The same bill had already passed the Senate, 63-34, in April. It will now be sent to President Bush, who has promised to veto the bill, as he has similar legislation before.
"If this bill were to become law, American taxpayers would for the first time in our history be compelled to support the deliberate destruction of human embryos," the president said from the G8 summit in Germany. "Crossing that line would be a grave mistake."
Democrats accuse the president and other Republicans who oppose destroying human embryos of blocking future medical breakthroughs that could cure or treat diseases such as Alzheimer's, cancer, diabetes, leukemia, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's, plus help victims of burns and spinal injuries.
A quintessential example was seen Thursday on the House floor, from where Speaker Nancy Pelosi lashed out at the White House:
"With his cruel veto pen, President Bush dashed the hopes of many for the healing potential of stem cell research."
Another was heard from Rep. Dennis Cardoza, also a Democrat from California, who actually remarked:
"We should get this to the president's desk as soon as possible so he can veto it and be even more unpopular with the American people."
But on Wednesday, a real live technological breakthrough was announced by three teams of scientists, and the whole explosive political issue surrounding stem cells can be expected to dissipate as a result. The scientists used skin to produce the equivalent of embryonic stem cells; such cells could be used to find new treatments for those diseases without the extinguishing of tiny human lives.
Researchers at Japan's Kyoto University, Massachusetts' Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute attacked genes in mouse skin cells with genetically engineered viruses to change them to an embryonic condition. The scientists believe the revolutionary new process can, with adjustments, work on human cells. Each of the three teams is publishing their research in scientific journals this week.
This is bad news indeed for liberal Democratic leaders in Congress and running for president. Soon, they will no longer be able to accuse the president of cruelty. No longer will they, and lobbying groups such as the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research and Americans United for Change, be able to use the stem cell issue to bully politicians -- Democrat and Republican alike -- with ethical qualms about destroying human life.
No longer will Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois be able accuse the president and other stem cell opponents of "preventing the advancement of important science."
And no longer will Sen. Hillary Clinton be able to frame the decision before the president by asking if he will "support the scientific community at this moment of unequaled optimism and discovery, or will he set us back?"
In another medical breakthrough that doesn't require the destruction of embryos, a collaboration of 200 British scientists from 50 research groups, it was announced, has discovered 10 new genes linked to seven common ailments: heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis, high blood pressure, type 1 and 2 diabetes, bipolar disorder and Crohn's disease.
Democrats' fervor to destroy embryos is increasingly beginning to look not like concern for the advancement of medical science, but like a political weapon to use against Republicans and moderates in their own party.
Unfortunately for them, it will soon be clear to all that it has a very limited shelf life.
