Despite Bush's claims, stem cell bill is reasonable

May 31, 2005


President Bush is wrong about embryonic stem cell research. The president has threatened to veto a very reasonable bill passed by the House last week, and likely to be approved by the Senate, that would permit the expansion of federally funded stem cell investigations. The bill would allow fertility clinic frozen embryos, destined to be destroyed, to be used at research labs that receive federal money.

If Bush were to carry through on his veto threat, it would be ill-advised. Does he really want to use his first veto -- after nearly 41/2 years in office -- to quash a bill aiding research that medical scientists say has the potential to save millions of lives? For children with juvenile diabetes and adults, like the late actor Christopher Reeve, who sit in wheelchairs unable to walk or move, and others with chronic, disabling illnesses that are life-threatening and as yet have no cure, the promise of embryonic stem cells is that they can be scientifically nudged in a petri dish to create different tissues: heart tissue, skin tissue, brain tissue, pancreatic tissue, etc.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who is sponsor of the Senate version and who is struggling with Hodgkin's disease, angrily told the New York Times: "It is scandalous, absolutely scandalous that there are so many people with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and heart disease and cancer. . .. And not to have the ability of the best medical care is simply atrocious."

Bush has tried to cast a moral cloak over his position, even appearing last week among a crowd of women and their sweet-faced babies who were born from frozen embryos donated by fertility clinic clients who no longer needed them. In his first term, he limited federal funding for stem cells to those from a few embryos already destroyed. He said last week that he would veto the use of taxpayers' money "to promote science which destroys life in order to save life." But the embryos to be used, according to the bill, would be approved by the donating couple. They would be embryos slated for the waste bin.

The fact that both the House and Senate bills have bipartisan support should tell the president most Americans are in favor of this. Even abortion opponents like Republican Senators Orrin Hatch of Utah and Gordon Smith of Oregon support Specter's bill. A Pew Research Center poll in December showed 56 percent of Americans believed "it was more important to conduct stem cell research that might result in new medical cures than to avoid the loss of the potential life of human embryos involved in this research."

Finally, there is the argument of competitive, global technology. China, Britain and South Korea, which just made important stem cell advances, have no moral qualms about this science and will leave us in their research dust if we don't proceed apace. A science that can aid so many, even at the cost of a few frozen embryos, makes common sense.

Gun bill better with safety on

While we were disappointed that Gov. Blagojevich did not follow through on all of his proposed pension reforms, we vigorously applaud his decision to veto part of the gun legislation that was passed in Springfield.

The legislation was a questionable compromise between gun rights activists and gun-control advocates. It would allow the destruction of state records for gun sales, while closing the loophole that permitted people to buy guns at gun shows without background checks. It was a cagey bill, designed by the National Rifle Association to back the governor and lawmakers who are gun control advocates into a corner. Lawmakers were damned if they didn't support the bill and damned if they did.

The governor says he will endorse the part of the legislation that will close the gun show loophole -- a provision that Mayor Daley strongly supported -- and veto destruction of records. The State Police will be relieved about the veto, as they argued they needed state gun sale records to help track criminals.

The NRA made a feeble argument that police were using records of gun sales to harass and intimidate legitimate gun owners, but there is no widespread evidence of this. The governor's move won't be popular with Downstate lawmakers, but the safety of our citizens comes first.