| hmm... John Kerry provides half-a-false-dichotomy and hopes you will make it whole. He is vigorously in favor of advancing the cause of stem cell research (so his opponent must necessarily be against it, right?) *
In August of 2001, Bush dodged this bullet. Members of his
LoyalRight were urging him to uphold the 1995 congressional ban on all
human embryo research. After weeks of consideration, Bush came
up with a thoughtful exception to that ban: a mechanism the NIH uses
today to target federal funds to biomedical fetal tissue
research. Call it: his "compromise".
* When it was discovered that nearly all existing fetal tissue lines were ineligible for federal funds (due to problems like mouse-DNA contamination -- good thing to know), Bush authorized the NIH to launch an international effort assessing the state of current research and creating a registry to identify and help distribute clean fetal stem cell lines. * Bush established a "Council on Bioethics" to initiate discussion and keep the public informed on profound matters such as these (before our public policy falls hopelessly behind the science and business of it all). * Bush has allocated ~$35 million (so far) to the funding of fetal stem cell research. In addition, nearly a half billion $$ in federal funds have been made available (to stem cell research not requiring human clones or the harvesting of fetal tissue). That said... Could we do more to advance this medical science? Absolutely. Will we? Absolutely. How can anyone really doubt that? Expansion of the program at the NIH continues. New lines of cells (and growing $$$) continue to flow into this field from the private sector. Some States are even taking up the call as a strategic competitive draw for high-tech jobs. Biotechnology advances will continue to drive public policy (the other way around, I would argue, is not only "not happening", but virtually can't happen -- this genie is out of its bottle and no one of significance is really trying to stuff it back in). THE CHALLENGE: So, how 'bout this -> Kerry has been making public policy for a couple of decades now. Use his Senate record to assemble a list of accomplishments towards this cause. See if it even comes close to stacking-up against what G.W. Bush had actually done by the middle of his first term.** ** while juggling just a few other fairly high priorities, mind you |