I’m glad that Howard Dean, the doctor running for president, is raising the issue of Bush’s shameful stem-cell research policy. (I wrote about it in 2001, when it was announced.) Bush’s wrongheaded plan restricts vital medical research using a religious rationale that, if consistently applied, would also require the banning of a wide variety of commonly used fertility treatments. That would cause a political uproar, of course, and when has Bush ever cared about consistency? His Rove-driven policies are all about targeting electoral constituencies. Released in the summer before 9/11 with considerable ballyhoo, Bush’s stem-cell research ban (that’s essentially what it is, though he trumpeted a dubious loophole allowing extremely limited research to proceed) got lost in the post-9/11 news torrent. Dean deserves credit for putting this story back in the spotlight and reminding us where Bush went wrong.
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