Tuesday, March 10, 2009

If They Lie About Stem Cells...

...they'll lie about other things, too!

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Obama's "false choice" in moral values.


From tiny embryonic cells to the large-scale physics of global warming, President Barack Obama urged researchers on Monday to follow science and not ideology as he abolished contentious Bush-era restraints on stem-cell research. "Our government has forced what I believe is a false choice between sound science and moral values," Obama declared as he signed documents changing U.S. science policy and removing what some researchers have said were shackles on their work.

"It is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda - and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology," Obama said.
-Forbes

What's wrong with those statements? First, the less than objective AP reporter:
"he abolished contentious Bush-era restraints on stem-cell research". First of all, Bush levied no restraints on stem cell research, only on Federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, and then not ALL embryonic stem cell research! Very promising research has come out of adult stem cells. And there were no prohibitions from Bush on existing embryonic stem cell research, just a ban on Federal funding of new embryonic stem cell lines...lines that would require the destruction of embryos created specifically to be destroyed.
Had any private researcher wanted to pursue embryonic stem cell research, they were free to do so, so long as they received private funding.

But note that the press, when speaking of the Bush funding prohibitions, invariably spoke of "stem cells", without specifying what kind and implying a ban or prohibition on research rather than just a padlock on the Federal checkbook. (Rather like those who cry "Censorship" when they can't get public funding for their art!)

"Our government has forced what I believe is a false choice between sound science and moral values"
Science was always free to be sound. Science does not require Federal funding in order to be "sound".

"It is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda - and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology,"
Scientific data was never "distorted or concealed" in the decision not to fund embryonic stem cell research. A moral, life or death decision was made not to use tax dollars to fund something that many would find morally repugnant.

It seems to me that the only distortions to serve a political agenda were those made by Obama and the sycophantic press that swoons over his every teleprompted word.
It was never a "false choice between science and morality", it was a moral choice of how science is funded. A choice that illustrates a moral failing of the Left.

Cross posted at Say Anything

Speaking of serving a political aganda, bonus points if you can identify which ambulance chasing one term Senator and failed Vice-Presidential candidate said this:

"If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again."


This was echoed in a comment at the signing ceremony:

"[President John F. Kennedy] was first to put man on [the] moon. Under President Obama the paralyzed will be the first to walk on Earth." -34-year-old Roman Reed, paralyzed from the waist down at 19, while playing college football.


As Krauthammer noted, hope is good, but giving people like Roman Reed false hope is despicable. There certainly is no "science" that would guarantee that embryonic stem cells will accomplish this any sooner, if at all as opposed to any other stem cell research.

1 comment:

  1. The notion that the President of the United States, with the language used in the Executive Order, has now paved the way for the creation of human embryos for the specific intention of destroying them again is as ethically bankrupt a decision that has ever come from the White House at any time in history. It is embarrassing, disgusting and - above all - unnecessary.

    As I've written about, these pluripotent cells that come from destroyed human embryos can now be created in labs without having to destroy anything. They are the biological equivalent of embryonic stem cells.

    Well done, Proof, as always.

    ReplyDelete