Bush Vetoes Stem Cell Legislation

MSNBC's Arthur Caplan uses the iconic Daily News headline to blast Pres. Bush for his veto of Congress's stem-cell legislation: the first time Bush has used his veto since he was not elected in 2000.

President Bush's embryonic stem cell policy began with lies and has now ended with one.

Bush reserved his first veto as president for one of the only valuable things this do-almost-nothing Congress has managed to actually get done.

With a flourish of a veto pen that has remained dormant no matter how dopey Congress has been, the Senate bill allowing public funding of embryonic stem cell research has been consigned to the legislative trash can.

An administration that has shown itself over and over again to have trouble telling the truth is now telling Americans in wheelchairs, those with damaged hearts, babies who are diabetic and those left immobile by Parkinsonism not to worry. The president, whose grasp of science left him unable to identify creationism as a fundamentally religious idea, and his trusty sidekick Karl Rove, rarely seen in a white lab coat but who knows something about rats, having been in Washington for some time now, claim to know best which medical research is most likely to benefit diseased Americans in the future.

When Bush uttered his first confused words on the subject of embryonic stem cell research five years ago in August 2001, he said that he was opposed to embryonic stem cell research since it involved the destruction of human life.

He noted that there were embryos, and many of them, already in existence in infertility clinics and left unwanted by those who created them. But he held it was wrong to use those in research. Instead, he told us, he had found a way out of the dilemma of how to do embryonic stem cell research without destroying any embryos.

What had Bush figured out that no one in the scientific community could see then and remains unable to see now?

There were, he said, 60 stem cell lines that had been made from embryos which held "great promise that could lead to breakthrough therapies and cures." If he gave federal money to support research on those lines and funded research on adult stem cells, such as bone marrow, fetal blood cells taken from umbilical cords and other adult stem cells found in skin, muscle and the intestine, then all would be well.

Wrong science, flawed ethics

The president's supporters, a much larger set then than now, blessed his insight and his wisdom in producing a marvelous "compromise" and pronounced the quandary over stem cell research resolved.

Except, as even the president must have known and some of his most vocal supporters knew, the president was talking through his hat.