Invincible ignorance
That’s a term I once heard a priest use to describe dissidents stuck in their disbelief in the face of all evidence and reason. It rather neatly fits the crowd of opinion makers and law makers who insist on plunging headlong down the hill toward scientific calamity, because the tracks of their agenda lead there. And that would be Capital Hill, by the way, where the Democratic leadership followed through on their pursuit to fund embryonic stem cell research, with reckless disregard for the scientific truths against that research — no matter who’s paying the bill.
Check the previous two posts for some good links to information, which some members of Congress failed to consider in their urgent bid to get this vote in.
The US House of Representatives today approved a bill providing for federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research.
The legislation, which was listed among the top priorities of the new Democratic leadership in Congress, is a direct challenge to President George W. Bush, who has indicated that he would veto the bill. Although the bill was expected to clear the House, the vote (253-174) fell more than 30 votes short of the two-thirds majority that would be required to override a presidential veto. The bill now goes before the Senate.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi hailed the January 11 vote as a victory for medical research, and urged Bush “to join members from both sides of the aisle in supporting the hope of stem cell research.”
What hope? Go back a couple of posts and read this outstanding, comprehensive piece in First Things. Then ask Mrs. Pelos to elaborate on this “hope of stem cell research.” Make these leaders accountable for their words.
Here’s another clearly written article refuting the claim that has become the mantra of the embryonic stem cell crowd, another one that should be required homework reading for legislators who actually vote on these things. It’s “An Unreal Debate” alright, and the ideologues are getting more aggressive.
This week offers a perfect snapshot of the sorry state of the embryonic-stem-cell-research debate. On Monday, the newspapers were full of headlines about a new scientific paper showing that stem cells derived from amniotic fluid appear to have many of the same capabilities as embryonic stem cells, but without the ethical pitfalls of embryo destruction. But on Thursday, the House of Representatives (took up) once again a bill that would overturn President Bush’s stem-cell-research-funding policy, and have the government use taxpayer money to encourage the destruction of embryos for their cells.
That disconnect mirrors the larger detachment of the political push for embryonic-stem-cell funding from the actual facts on the ground. Again and again, advocates for relaxing the ethical standards on funding make assertions and arguments with no basis in fact. Again and again they refuse to acknowledge the increasing evidence that genuine alternatives to embryo-destructive research may be possible.
Invincible ignorance. Why the refusal to acknowledge the obvious — to hear the heralds shout that the emperor has no clothes? Two guesses. One, there’s a lot of money to be made in the biotech industry. And two, when one part of a liberal agenda that disregards the sanctity of human life fails to hold up, the wheels start to come off the wagon carrying that whole party forward. And they will fight to protect that at all costs. Even life.
