Stem Cells and more

The New York Times reports on President Bush's recent Stem Cell Veto.

"The veto, only the third of Mr. Bush’s presidency, puts him at odds not only with the majority of voters, according to polls, but also with many members of his own political party."

Why should this issue be any different from all the others?

My perception of the stem cell tempest in a teacup is that it's a purely ideological issue. The anti-abortion camp doesn't want to use stem cells because they have committed ideologically to the idea that life begins at conception, therefore they must, in defiance of reason, oppose this medical research with potentially life-saving applications. I actually find it hard to articulate a coherent response to people who side with Bush on this issue because of how unreasonable their position is, like Flat-Earthers. Embryos which are going to be thrown away and will never be people can be used to save lives? I'm on for that, definitely.

Also, I learned from a blog that my Uncle Bob pointed me to that the Bible does not consider a fetus a person. Exodus 21:22 (KJV) says

"If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman's husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine."

This is right in the middle of the whole "eye for an eye" section of Exodus. Moses carefully notes that murder shall be punished by death, and that in case of a man injuring another so that he can't work, compensation equal to the loss of income over that time shall be paid. It's pretty clear, then, that the bible doesn't consider killing a fetus the same thing as killing a person. It's also no reason to assume that in the Israelite camp intentional miscarriage was any less common than it is in any other primitive community.

The passage is also troubling because it isn't completely clear on whether beating your slave to death counts as murder, and also cursing your parents is punishable by death. But this shouldn't be a problem for the pro-life crowd, because after all they're the ones who are setting so much store by that book, not me.

Opposition to Stem Cell research doesn't make any sense, because it's a separate issue from abortion. The embryos from which stem cells are being harvested are already dead; they will be disposed of whether they are used for research or not. I think this just goes more to the spitefulness of the pro-life movement, like I looked at in my previous blog entry about the Informed Consent laws. The pro-lifers are angry because they have no prospect of outright banning abortion, so they want to make it as inconvenient and uncomfortable as possible, and strangle a highly beneficial medical research field because of it's vague association with abortion.

President Bush also dropped this pearl of wisdom on us: The United States is "a nation founded on the principle that all human life is sacred." Anything I can say about this would be trite (e.g. "all human life that is white male and property owning!") so I'll just let it stand alone as evidence that we have a president who lacks even the most elementary historical perspective.

Something from David Brooks here. This column is a fantastic mess, because all he does is briefly summarize the positions of two academics, and conclude by saying that they're both right and the truth was somewhere in the middle. How utterly useless of you, Mr. Brooks.

Free Libby and So On

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I am an Internet Failure

A whole week with no new blog posts? For shame, Evan. I'd like to claim I've been busy, which is only partially true. Full honesty would be to admit that I've been flaking out on more than one thing this summer--so it is admitted. But, despite delays, here is more news that strikes my fancy!

Bush Rebuffs Germany on Emissions

There's something about the sweet little romance between George W. Bush and Angela Merkel that pleases me immensely. For those who hadn't heard, George W. Bush went to a G-8 meeting which was Angela Merkel's (the first female chancellor of Germany) first diplomatic event of that magnitude and gave her an unwanted shoulder rub which resulted in a panicked and disgusted rebuff from Merkel. I consider this my all-time favorite moment of Bush's administration, because in less than five seconds he managed to insult another head of state, insult her entire country by disrespecting said head of state, demean women in general, and make himself look like a total frat-boy idiot. That's talent.

So, whenever they pop up in the news together, I have to smile. This time the news is not so sanguine, however: the typical Bush administration treatment of the Global Warming problem. The more I learn about Global Warming the more I think that it is the key issue of our time, shadowboxing with terrorism and the very unfortunate Iraq war being sideshows in comparison. We're talking about unprecedented changes in the world as we know it, after all.

My favorite part of the story was the quote from our President:

He said the United States “can serve as a bridge between some nations who believe that now is the time to come up with a set goal” and “those who are reluctant to participate in the dialogue.”

So... the United States can serve as a bridge between Germany et al. and... the United States? It's annoying that the New York Times completely bought into the canard that India and China are the countries that we need to wag our fingers at. In the future they will be a problem that needs solving, but for now the United States is the biggest offender and also the nation with the greatest potential for finding solutions. The research infrastructure and resources that the USA could put behind a campaign to improve energy efficiency and decrease greenhouse gas pollution would dwarf the rest of the world combined, if only we had an executive branch that took the problem seriously!

Moreover, we do know that the Chinese government is in fact very interested in being part of the solution on global warming. Personally, I think it's a pragmatist issue for them; all indications are that China will become more and more influential and powerful in the coming years, but unchecked global warming would turn the entire world upside down. Why should they want something like that to check their nation's progress? India I know less about, but I doubt very much that they are as actively hostile to the Global Warming issue as the Bush administration.

Also at the G-8 summit there were some riots. Quelle horreur! Rioters at a G-8 summit? Who would have guessed?

Next:
David Brooks, anyone?

One thing that writing a blog does is that it gives me an excuse to force myself to read things I would otherwise ignore. David Brooks would be one example. I have no idea why he is a featured columnist for the New York Times. He is awful awful awful, and I have never read a column from him that has caused me to think his opinion meant anything. Him working at the NYT is like the Yankees having a catcher who just drops the ball five or six times a game. The only explanation I can think of for his employment is that the New York Times has some bias-related obligation to employ at least one right-leaning columnist, and they choose to retain one who is drab, unskilled, and unconvincing so as to prevent to right-wing looking good in their pages.

This editorial is not so bad, to the point that I'm almost glad I read it. It's just two-dimensional, is all. David Brooks tells us that bad things are happening in Iraq, and briefly describes how it is happening. In fact, he doesn't tell me anything I didn't know at this time last year. Thanks, David Brooks, for your pseudo-commentary.

I'm thinking that in the future I'll keep reading his work and commenting, hounding him as it were, in this blog. We'll see. I'm also considering a little fiction thing that I might write to submit to the UofI rags, and put bits of it here. We'll see what happens with that. I always feel very enthusiastic about that sort of thing but little comes of it.