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.