Text 1324, 86 rader
Skriven 2004-08-16 14:40:22 av Alan Hess
Ärende: stem cell policy
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Did Mrs. Bush open her mouth and insert her foot?
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http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/bal-op.tucker16aug16,0,2506604.story?
coll=bal-pe-opinion
Current policy on stem cells has no good defense


By Cynthia Tucker

August 16, 2004

ATLANTA -- Laura Bush could not have expected to end the argument over stem
cell research with her tepid proclamation: "We don't even know that stem cell
research will provide cures for anything -- much less that (cures) are very
close."

Do you see that next hill? We're not going to climb it because there may be
nothing worthwhile on the other side.

That's not how Americans approach life or the world, of course. We climb the
hill. So what Ms. Bush is really doing is making a persuasive case for upending
her husband's restrictive policies, which have severely limited research on
therapeutic cloning in this country.

After all, the Wright Brothers couldn't have known that their contraption would
shrink the globe, allowing wide-ranging travel that has transformed whole
cultures. They didn't even know the darn thing would fly. But they believed it
would. Powered by their own relentless optimism, they finally managed to keep
their weird craft aloft for 12 seconds. In so doing, they ushered in the age of
human flight.

Dr. Jonas Salk could not have known his concoction of weakened polio viruses
would protect against the deadly disease. But he certainly believed it would.
And millions of Americans dared to believe with him. Many parents were worried
by the prospect of intentionally infecting their children with a lessened
strain of a hideous virus. But faced with an epidemic, they made the leap. And
they ended up protecting their children from the scourge.

President John F. Kennedy could not have known that the United States would put
men on the moon when he dreamed of it in 1961, ratcheting up the space race
with the Soviet Union. Mr. Kennedy died before his dream was achieved, but the
U.S. put Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon in 1969.

Scientific and technological research always involves a leap into the unknown.
And, since the Middle Ages, science has had to cope with not just uncertainty
but also the forces of resistance, tradition and religion. The Catholic Church
threatened Galileo with imprisonment because he dared follow the path of
Copernicus in declaring that the Earth revolved around the sun -- and not the
other way around. The church had declared Galileo's finding in conflict with
Scripture.

The opponents of broader, federally-funded stem cell research don't represent
anything like a majority of Americans -- or even a majority of believers. They
are the minority at the end of the spectrum, the absolutists who believe life
begins the minute sperm fertilizes egg.

Nancy Reagan, the widow of the man who made conservative Christians a force in
modern politics, has called on President Bush to change his position.
Fifty-eight senators have joined her. But Mr. Bush still kowtows to the
extremists. The president has limited research that could -- of course, no one
knows for sure, but many scientists are quite optimistic -- lead to cures for
Parkinson's disease, diabetes, spinal cord injuries, multiple sclerosis and
even some cancers. Some of those cures could be decades away. But we can't get
there until we get started.

I've never understood a set of religious principles that attach so much
importance to unfeeling, unseeing blastocysts and so little to actual living,
suffering human beings -- children with diabetes, or middle-aged adults
enduring the body's breakdown through Parkinson's, or adolescents condemned to
a wheelchair because of an accident. And I certainly don't understand a
21st-century superpower that devotes billions to building smart bombs to
destroy life efficiently but refuses to fund research that could save or
enhance the lives of millions.

No wonder Ms. Bush didn't have anything more persuasive to say about her
husband's position on stem cell research. It is a ludicrous policy for which
there is no enlightened defense.

Cynthia Tucker is editorial page editor for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Her column appears Mondays in The Sun.

Copyright + 2004, The Baltimore Sun

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