Just discovered the great Wesley J. Smith has a blog: Secondhand Smoke. All bioethics, all the time. Check out the link in this post for updates on what adult stem cells can do. Plus, did you know The Jews may be the key to curing Parkinson's and spinal cord injuries? And I'm not talking' about your nice, Jewish doctor. Check this out.
Anyway, the article on stem cell cures made me bless the President. Remember the first public address of his presidency was his decision to limit federal funding on stem cell research to the already-established cell lines? He caught hell from everyone for that decision. The Left because it always wants an unbridled right to do anything, and the Right, frankly, because I think the pre-announcement scuttlebutt was that he was going to permit funding, so they just ran with their prepared denunciation press releases. That is certainly the way the USCC and other pro-life organs' comments read --they didn't seem to respond to his actual ruling.
To be fair, a few people I talked to were concerned that if embryonic stem cell research turned out to work, the Prez wouldn't be able to hold back the tide; but since there was no ethical objection to using the existing lines, it seemed to me that the President made the prudent decision. Prudence always entails a bit of a gamble because you can't see the future --but a principled gamble. In this case, the Prez. bought us four years (remember, without him, Congress would have funded full unbridled research way back then)--and if they don't overturn his veto, eight years total, to find alternatives to embryonic stem cell research. And we are. There are these promising cures, the new technology that many good bioethicists are signing off on, etc. And maybe, too, we'll have 8 years for embryonic stem cell research to come to naught, much as "fetal tissue" came to naught in the 1990s. But hold your Senator's feet to the fire --the defection of Senator Frist is rumored to have swung enough votes to veto-proof the majority. Rumored, I emphasize.
