A few days ago, President Obama has reversed Bush’s ban on federal funds for stem cell research. May science and progress continue for a few years, many a long few years, if the conservatives continue to implode and self destruct.
Humans will be cloned, whether George Bush and the far right likes that or not. Yet, our leadership during the last administration appeared to be stuck in the middle-ages, where the elite squashed science for fear of losing power and prestige. We had an American president and a German pope who together seemed to do their best to stall progress, science and intellectual freedom in the name of security, piousness and ethics. Whose security, piousness and ethics?
At the rate we were going, all serious medical science and research would have been done in Asia, further cementing the inexorable world leadership role of China in the twenty-first century. If we don’t reverse this trend soon we will have to go to Korea or China to buy the technology required to grow a new heart when our current one is diseased.
This gives the term shipping jobs offshore a whole new meaning. America is missing the point in so many areas, it is frightening.
Below the article I found in 2005 that prompted this thought. After reading it, scrutinize the grammar in Bush’s sentence quoted in the last paragraph.
The Article:
WASHINGTON – President Bush on Friday, May 20, 2005, said he would veto legislation that would loose restrictions on embryonic stem cell research and expressed concern about human cloning research in South Korea.
“I’m very concerned about cloning,” the president said. “I worry about a world in which cloning becomes accepted.”
White House deputy press secretary Trent Duffy said the work in South Korea amounted to human cloning for the sole purpose of scientific research. “The president is opposed to that,” Duffy said. “That represents exactly what we’re opposed to.”
South Korean researchers, funded by their government, reported producing human embryos through cloning and then extracting their stem cells. It is a major advancement in the quest to grow patients’ own replacement tissue to treat diseases.
The president also threatened a veto of legislation that would clear the way for taxpayer money to be spent on embryonic stem cell research.
A measure by Reps. Mike Castle, R-Del., and Diana DeGette, D-Colo., would lift Bush’s 2001 ban on the use of federal dollars for research using any new embryonic stem cell lines. Bush said he would veto such a measure if it reached his desk.
“I made very clear to Congress that the use of federal money, taxpayer’s money, to promote science which destroys life in order to save life – I’m against that,” Bush said. “Therefore, if the bill does that, I would veto it.”