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Bush Flip Flops on New Stem Cell Procedure

This week the genetic engineering of nonembryos has been all the buzz. That this procedure is a red herring is one issue. But more than that it seems President Bush is wearing the venerable flip flops on this one.

The procedure was actually born out of his own Presidential Council on Bioethics and when Republican Senators Rick Santorum and Arlen Specter co-sponsored a bill that would have allocated NIH funding to this type of research, he was all for it. In a press conference, on July 19 (the same day Bush vetoed the more significant stem cell bill), he had this to say after the Santorum-Specter bill didn’t pass through the House:

"I'm disappointed that Congress failed to pass another bill that would have promoted good research...It would have authorized additional federal funding for promising new research that could produce cells with the abilities of embryonic cells, but without the destruction of human embryos. This is an important piece of legislation...I'm disappointed that the House failed to authorize funding for this vital and ethical research."

But this week a White House spokeswoman told the New York Times that

"The new procedure would not satisfy the objections of Mr. Bush…Any use of human embryos for research purposes raises serious ethical questions. This technique does not resolve those concerns."

So once the science shows progress beyond mice, Bush backs off and shows how much he really supports "promising new research."

Posted by Leigh Ferrara on 08/25/06 at 4:11 PM | E-mail | Print



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Posted by: Draft Sachs on 08/25/06 at 5:51 PM

Bush just hates science because it does not agree with his preconceived notions about every thing, life, global warming etc. He and his kind are all about death and destruction, they are pro-death not at all pro-life as they claim. The unknown terrifies Bush and the right wing radical theocratic fundies of the Catholic church, my church I am ashamed to say, and the white southern Baptists.

Bush is bobbing and weaving, ducking and dodging all the time. Or as to use Karl Rove's political lexicon, flip floping.

Posted by: Bob DAmico on 08/27/06 at 12:17 PM

I'm afraid Leigh Ferrara's charge that President Bush has "flipflopped" on stem cell research is based on a misunderstanding. The Santorum legislation he supports (and may soon replicate through executive action) only funds research in pluripotent stem cells that are NOT obtained from embryos. The Lanza research does take cells from embryos (and it now turns out that, contrary to early reports, it does so by destroying the embryo). Lanza's approach of trying to take single cells "harmlessly" from early embryos did not arise from the President's Council on Bioethics -- in fact the Council members (including members who support ESC research) had been very critical of it, as have others, and it was not included in the legislation. You may like or not like the President's stand, but he hasn't changed that positon in the last week at all.

Posted by: Richard Doerflinger on 08/28/06 at 11:49 AM

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