John Robb suggests that Bush’s year-old stem-cell research policy — hailed by some at the time as a Solomonic compromise — is a failure, one that will bite back at the president in future elections, as voters with ailing relatives who might have been helped by robust research turn on him.
As I argued at the time (and Michael Kinsley later echoed), the policy — which is built around Bush’s stated conviction that all embryos are sacred and the government should act to protect them — is baldly hypocritical. Vast numbers of embryos are created and discarded every year during fertility treatments like in vitro fertilization. If Bush actually felt this was profoundly immoral, he’d do something to stop it. But since such fertility treatment touches the lives of a huge swathe of the electorate, the president wouldn’t think of banning it. Couples who are stuck with extra embryos as a byproduct of such treatment typically have no choice but to dispose of them; stem cell research offers a way to make good use of them for the betterment of all. Why not allow that? Why not, in cases where it doesn’t conflict with people’s religious beliefs, encourage that?
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