Of All The Things

President Bush used the first veto of his presidency to stop Congress from funding and encouraging research into stem cells. At the same time, he signed into law two other bills allowing other kinds of research into stem cells. What was the difference between the two bills? The other two bills only funded research into existing lines of stem cells from previously-harvested cells; the one that was vetoed would have permitted and paid for harvesting new stem cells from fertilized embryos stored in vitro which otherwise will be burned and discarded.

If you are going to take the position that when sperm enters egg, a human life is formed, this is a more or less consistent stance; your objection will be that these fertilized embryos are being discarded at all. If you are going to take the position that humanity is not yet invested in that cellular structure until some later point in fetal development, the distinction drawn by the President is nonsense. Either way, the potential for scientific and medical knowledge that can be garnered from this research is tremendous; this is where human biology is happening right now. Concrete medical goals can be identified from this research, like cures for degenrative neurological diseases like Alzheimer's and Lou Gehrig's and Huntington's, as well as possibly assisting patients with other kinds of damage, like severed nerves, heal and get better. Certainly no one is suggesting that the President is opposed to finding cures and new medical techniques for healing, but he does think that the ends do not justify the means of killing all these embryos.

To which I add a few caveats. The embryos are going to be destroyed anyway. The veto just means that they cannot be put to research use paid for by federal dollars. The research is not illegal; it just cannot be federally funded. For instance, Gov. Schwarzenegger is scrambling to find money for California's state-run stem cell research center in the face of a variety of lawsuits against that center getting off the ground. Private research can also pay for this work. But federal funding is important because so much other research is underwritten by federal money in some fashion and the current state of affairs requires substantial segregation of money and knowledge to maintain federal eligibility for other kinds of research support.

I'm personally closer to Schwarzenegger's view on the issue, which should come as no surprise to all of you Loyal Readers. This research is going to happen, whether here or elsewhere in the world. Taking the strong pro-life stance that it is immoral to destroy a fertilized embryo to conduct this research, no matter how noble the goal is, requires not just refusing to fund the research -- it requires outlawing it completely. This Bush has failed to do or to even advocate. In part his failure to do so is motivated by the popularity of the research and in part from the impracticality of the position that the research should not happen at all, for reasons set forth above.

Presidents have the veto power for a reason -- to impose his own judgment and policy preferences over those of Congress. Presidents use the veto power at their risk; as in this case, the program being vetoed is quite popular with pretty much everyone but his base of core supporters. He invoked the power for a moral reason, which I suppose I admire on one level even if I disagree with the moral imperative that he claims motivated him.

But really, if you're in for a penny, you're in for a pound. If you're going to tolerate the research, then that means you approve of it. Denying federal funding for the research but permitting it to continue is a half measure that does not fulfill the moral mandate claimed for the refusal to fund. Maybe it's the best the President can do, but I would have preferred that he had not done it at all -- and acting from a position of moral idealism means that it is not time for realpolitik. So it really seems to me that this veto has not accomplished very much, if anything, other than requiring the administrative burdens of stem cell researchers.