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The stem cells veto: Strange calculus
That's the price that has to be paid to achieve a more important goal, even if innocent civilians also are caught up in the carnage unleashed by the war.
When the fate of tiny human embryos is in question, the reckoning changes remarkably.
After five and one-half years of a pork-laden presidency, President Bush finally vetoed something -- the bill to permit federal funding of research on new lines of human embryonic stem cells. Funding for earlier lines is allowed, but they're limited in number and are getting old.
Surplus embryos from in-vitro fertilization could provide the stem cells to open up avenues of research.
The cells may -- and we emphasize may -- have the capacity to grow into any number of tissues to treat disease and injury. The embryonic type might be the most versatile.
The federal moratorium does not prevent private or state-sponsored research. But the experiments are enormously expensive; the best chance of breakthroughs would come with federal support.
It is a strange moral calculus that commits to bloodshed America's youth in an optional war for high-minded goals, but perhaps condemns other Americans with minds and hearts and families to pointless suffering and death.
For the sake of 150-cell embryos headed for the trash.
