Tempted to think he just mis-spoke, but….

….he repeated it, as clearly the way he thinks. It was a jaw-dropper.

The television was on as a background thing during family conversation, but we paid a little more attention to the interview Dr. Sanjay Gupta was doing with former president Bill Clinton on CNN on the topic of health care. The more interesting the interview got, the more we listened. Americans should all have access to health care. How can you disagree with that? Big pharmaceutical companies are doing important and valuable work in medicine, but they have to be reined in.

And then toward the end of the hour, in the final minutes, Dr. Gupta asked Clinton his thoughts about the new executive order opening up embryonic stem cell research, and the controversy surrounding it. In his long winded answer, Clinton made the point that a distinction should be clearly drawn with embryos that had the chance at fertilization and those that had no chance for that.

What? Embryos with no chance for fertilization….?!

And, Clinton said, even those who oppose that research see the use of these frozen embryos with no chance otherwise to be a pro-life response to the issue because they would be used for potential future treatments for all sorts of debilitating and life-threatening diseases.

Embryonic stem cell research…pro-life?

Dr. Sanjay Gupta sat there looking at him with sincerity and gravitas, nodding assent to these serious considerations. Seriously.

Never mind that there hasn’t been one inkling of success in embryonic stem cell research. And that adult stem cells and chord blood stem cells have produced great success and hope, serving the same pluripotent purposes in a moral and ethical way that also pays the benefit of curing now and offering greater possibility for the future than embryonic research. Clinton represented those embryonic stem cells as the highly prized resource for a gamut of cures.

So if you caught this in the above reference, you’ll be surprised to hear that he said it again, and with emphasis. At the end of the interview, Clinton said the use of embryonic stem cells is acceptable ‘if, absolutely no way, under no condition, is there any possibility that these embryos will be fertilized to become human beings.’

This man was the president of the United States. His interviewer, a neuro-surgeon, was considered by the current president of the United States to be the Surgeon General. And yet neither seemed to reflect awareness that in order to be an embryo, fertilization had to have already taken place.

And that an embryo is already an individual, unique, separate, whole and complete human being in early development.

This is such a learning moment….