Bush’s third veto

It’s coming up today, the third occasion George Bush will assert his presidential veto power and the second time on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.

At the same time, the White House said Bush will issue an executive order directing the Health and Human Services Department to promote research into cells that — like human embryonic stem cells — also hold the potential of regenerating into different types of cells that might be used to battle disease.

Democrats, who have made the stem cell legislation Bush promised to veto a top priority when they took control of the House and Senate in January, were quick to denounce the president’s decision.

“This is just one example of how the president puts ideology before science, politics before the needs of our families, just one more example of how out of touch with reality he and his party have become,” Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-New York, told the Take Back America conference of liberal activists Wednesday.

Hold on here…. The science is just not there to indicate that embryonic stem cells would lead to all these promised cures, while adult stem cell treatments have been very successful and promising. This is about politics alright, but they’re in the irrational activism that agitates for embryonic stem cell research and even cloning, which will bring the biotech industry billions of dollars.

This editorial page letter writer says more or less the same thing, and says it well.

We were informed that the president was certain to veto this bill, a bill that would relax limits on embryonic stem cell research. What limits? There are no federal limits on embryonic stem cell research, just on additional federal funding for such research.

What’s missing from the story is even more troubling.

The day before the House passed the bill, the scientific journal Nature reported that researchers at three universities had chemically manipulated skin cells to make them the equivalent of embryonic stem cells. That information was in The New York Times, so congressional leaders were likely aware of the breakthrough.

Now, to reiterate some background facts. Embryonic stem cell research requires the destruction of human life. It has not resulted in any medical cures. Indeed, very difficult obstacles must be overcome before embryonic stem cells can even be used in experimentation on human diseases.

On the other hand, stem cells from adult human tissue, placentas and umbilical cord blood are now in use in about 1,300 clinical trials and in cures for more than 70 diseases.

So, what is going on here? Investor’s Business Daily called the bill’s passage a blatant political move designed to generate a presidential veto and fodder for political ads. What really bugs me though is that the mainstream media seem incapable or unwilling to give us informative and unbiased reporting on an issue of this importance.

That pretty well nails it. So does this article in MercatorNet, really pulling back the cover on this story, with more information on that Nature report on skin cells. 

Only a few days ago an article in the leading journal Nature brought amazing news. A Japanese team at Kyoto University has discovered how to reprogram skin cells so that they “dedifferentiate” into the equivalent of an embryonic stem cell. From this they can be morphed, theoretically, into any cell in the body, a property called pluripotency. It could be the Holy Grail of stem cell science: a technique which is both feasible and ethical.

“Neither eggs nor embryos are necessary. I’ve never worked with either,” says Shinya Yamanaka. The first instalment of his research appeared a year ago — and was greeted with polite scepticism by his colleagues. At the time they were mesmerised by  dreams of cloning embryos and dissecting them for their stem cells.

The previous head of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, Lawrence S. B. Goldstein, had even dismissed reprogramming as quixotic. “If there are scientists who morally oppose [embryonic] stem cell research and want to devote their energies to uncovering alternatives, that’s fine,” said Goldstein. “But in no way, shape, or form should we ask the scientific community and patient community to wait to see if these new alternatives will work.” (3) Now, however, ten years after Dolly, not one scientist anywhere using a cloned human embryo has created a stem cell line. Not one. And a Japanese Don Quixote has.

This is mainstream research, not an eccentric theory from wild-eyed pro-lifers. Yamanaka’s work has been confirmed by two other teams affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University and the University of California, Los Angeles — both of them headed by ardent supporters of embryonic stem cell research.

So let’s be honest. Let’s be informed. And when the politicians carry on about stem cells with talking point rhetoric, you’ll know they’re not.

Listen carefully. Some of them want to be president.