With his Friday speech on the Senate floor announcing his support for federal funding of new embryonic stem cell research, Senate majority leader Bill Frist did the wrong thing at the wrong time.
For four years, embryo research advocates have claimed that the Bush administration has "banned stem cell research." Not so. The issue in question is federal funding for embryonic stem cell research--research in which new embryos will be destroyed. Such research has been, and is, legal, and while the president has endorsed a ban on human cloning, he has not proposed to outlaw the destruction of embryos created through in vitro fertilization (IVF). He simply does not want the federal government to fund or promote research that requires the ongoing destruction of embryos.
In fact, for all the complaints of scientists that the American government is standing in the way of their pioneering efforts, the striking fact about the present situation is that there are virtually no legal prohibitions on many radical areas of biotechnology. There are no limits on human cloning, no limits on fetal farming, no limits on the creation of man-animal hybrids, and no limits on the creation of human embryos solely for research and destruction. It is in this rather permissive moral and legal climate that Frist seeks to remove one of the few public boundaries that still exist.
In May, the House of Representatives passed a bill, sponsored by Representatives Michael Castle and Diana DeGette, that would authorize federal funding for research using stem cells derived
from IVF embryos left over in fertility clinics, unwanted by the parents who produced them, and destroyed by researchers. This means the federal government would promote what many citizens see as a grave evil: the deliberate destruction of nascent human life. The legislation, which President Bush has promised to veto, would make embryo destruction a nationally sponsored project. It is a most immoderate approach to a morally weighty issue.
It is immoderate partly because it is so unnecessary. When it comes to stem cell research, there are many sources of support, some of them from other levels of government. In 2004 (to our regret), California passed a law providing $3 billion in funding for embryo research and research cloning--far more money than even the most pro-stem cell administration would ever provide through the NIH. Meanwhile, embryo destruction proceeds apace in private laboratories around the country, and in some states beyond California with generous public funding.
So why does it make sense to force citizens to become complicit in an activity they see as wrong, when funding for such research is readily available from nonfederal sources? Why not support the current national policy, which neither funds nor bans embryo research? And why call for funding research on the so-called "spare embryos" without first demanding limits on other, even more egregious projects--such as creating and destroying embryos solely for research?
In his speech endorsing Castle-DeGette, Frist did also call for banning the creation of embryos solely for research and for banning human cloning. This makes him more responsible than most embryo research advocates. But he did not make his support for funding research using the "spares" contingent on setting such limits. So the effect of Frist's remarks was to strengthen the hand of those no-limits senators who wish to advance the very kinds of research that Frist still says he believes should be out of bounds (at least for now).
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