nabeepchen

Well maybe he did win the election, but it doesn’t mean that all of America suddenly embraces his bizarre theories of life and world. Take stem cells. Not to get into an argument over the pros and cons, morals and pseudo-morals, and ifs and whats, but it does seem that preserving pre-life in a petri dish is not really the highest priority of most people. And now that Bush is going to be with us for another 4 years (although the same was said about Nixon), it seems to be having the opposite effect.

Renegades–California and Harvard

One anti-Bush outcome of the election was in California. Not only did Californians reject Bush himself, but they also approved a $3 billion ballot measure this week to fund stem-cell research. California voters’ approval of Prop 71 sends a clear message of what the most populous state thinks of Bush’s policy–okay to kill Iraqi children and okay to cut off family planning services which lead to an increase in the abortion rate, and okay to do nothing for the thousands of homeless children in this country–but not okay to use a leftover pre-embroyo which is slated for destruction anyway, in a scientific experiment that may have far reaching results.

California has poised itself to become a hot spot for stem cell research, which is going to take off, regardless of what Bush thinks of it. Stem cell research may do for California what computers did a decade earlier. And not to be one-upped by a primitive place such as California, Harvard University has made its own plans. Rebuking federal funding, which comes with all sorts of neocon rules and regulations, they have announced plans to launch the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and hoped to raise at least US$100 million in financing for the institute. If any place in capable of raising that kind of cash, it is Harvard University. So we will have hot centers of research on both coasts, and of course, overseas, where some nations such as Singapore are pouring bottomless funding into stem cell research. They see this as a golden opportunity for them, and are probably grateful for Bush’s backward and incomprehensible attitude.

Republican Rebellion

But perhaps Bush’s greatest concern may be the attitude of his own party. For those who haven’t been following this, Bush only permits federal funding for stem cell research on only 22 stem cell lines. However, all of the human embryonic stem cells available to federally funded scientists under the Bush manifesto share a previously unrecognized trait that fosters rejection by the immune systems, diminishing their potential as medical treatments. In addition, another new study has concluded that at least a quarter of the Bush-approved cell colonies are so difficult to keep alive they have little potential even as research tools.

A large number of Republicans support stem cell research, including quite a few conservatives, such as Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch. He is among 58 senators and 206 House of Representatives members who have signed letters urging Bush to lift the restrictions. But it’s not really all that difficult to understand. Virtually everyone knows someone suffering from some type of illness, or dealing with the aftermath of an injury. The staunch conservative sitting in the Senate may have a beloved father grappling with Alzheimer’s, and the pain of watching his Dad sink into the shadows of dementia may be unbearable. That other staunch neocon may be watching his little daughter’s life slowly ebb away from a neuro-degenerative illness. Mom is dealing with Parkinson’s, Sister can’t walk because of a spinal cord injury….somehow, the life of a pre-embryo which may never become a human (the rate of becoming pregnant through in-vitro is actually quite low) becomes increasingly vague, more theoretical and less urgent, than helping loved ones here on earth.

So it should be interesting over the next few years, at least as far as this goes. What is certain is that other nations will be aggressively pursuing this, and the US has the opportunity to join in or be left behind. Other countries don’t give a hoot about Bush’s pseudo-morality, and as a result, I can foresee the day when Americans travel overseas to get treatment that is unavailable here. We will be left far behind.

As I’ve mentioned in another post, I have to wonder how far these morals go. If Bush, for example, were injured and paralyzed, and an experimental treatment derived from embryonic stem cell research was allowing others with the same type of injury to walk again, would he go for it? Would he turn up his nose and call it “immoral?” Or would he sign himself up for it as soon as possible?

Also, I have found that many people who passionately defend the right of the pre-embryo, along with the fetus, care little about the lives of those already here on earth. I wonder how many of the women who want the pre-embryos “saved” are offering their own wombs, so that the pre-embryo has a chance at life. Are they also willing to pay the storage fees to keep these pre-embryos frozen and theoretically, alive? And if their own child was born with a deadly illness, will they still be so quick to condemn stem-cell research?

So many questions, so few answers.