Tommy Thompson, Bush’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, sought to deflect criticism of the administration’s stem-cell research policies with an op-ed yesterday in USA Today. Unfortunately, Michael Kinsley had already debunked all of Thompson’s points the day before in the Washington Post.
Thompson got the ball rolling by arguing that Bush deserves credit for funding the research in the first place.
Three years ago, President Bush made the decision to open, for the first time, the laboratory doors to federal funding for human-embryonic-stem-cell research…. Federal funding for embryonic-stem-cell research has grown from zero dollars in 2001 to $24.8 million now, with no cap on future funding.
But, as Kinsley explained, that’s not nearly as impressive as it sounds.
It is true indeed that Bush’s predecessors, from George Washington to Bill Clinton, failed to fund embryonic stem cell research. Even Abraham Lincoln. Not a penny for stem-cell research from any of them. Historians believe this might have been because it didn’t exist yet. But that’s just a guess.
George Bush gave this nascent research a tiny sliver of money and piled on a smothering load of restrictions…. [T]hat makes Bush the only president ever to authorize federal rules against stem cell research. (emphasis added)
Thompson then argued that the purpose of Bush’s policy is to “treat, and perhaps cure, the most wretched diseases facing humankind.” Kinsley explained that the opposite is true.
The purpose of Bush’s stem cell policy is to discourage medical research using embryos. Bush is supposed to think that these clumps of a few dozen cells are every bit as human as the people who will suffer or die from diseases that stem cells could cure. He had better believe that, because stem-cell research uses embryos being discarded by fertility clinics and doesn’t actually add to the embryonic death toll at all. Only a deep conviction about the humanity of these microscopic dots — which have fewer human characteristics than a potato — could justify sacrificing real human lives to make the purely symbolic point that these dots are human too.
Thompson argued that the president’s policy “is working” because research in this field is expanding. Kinsley explained that the policy is working, but for the opposite reason.
Scientists are in agreement that Bush’s policy is succeeding. Stem cell research has been drastically slowed.
And finally, Thompson, echoing comments from Laura Bush, said stem-cell research may be “sowing false hopes.”
It is important for those on all sides of this debate to be sure not to make reckless promises that stem-cell research will immediately cure the world’s diseases. Years of hard work must be done before the basic research of today possibly becomes viable treatments and cures in the future.
Kinsley utterly demolishes Thompson’s (and Laura Bush’s) entire approach on “false hopes.”
As someone with a loved one (myself, as it happens) who has the disease (Parkinson’s) for which stem cells hold the most promise, please allow me to say: Thank you so much, Mrs. Bush, for trying to make sure that I don’t get too hopeful. While your husband and Sen. John Kerry make a major issue out of who is more optimistic, it is inspiring to have a first lady with the courage to say: Let’s be pessimistic! Optimism is unfair!
But talk is cheap. While Laura Bush is destroying hope by the traditional method of spreading gloom and pessimism, her husband is bringing the pessimist’s art into the 21st century by actually destroying the objective basis for hope. While she battles rhetorically against false hopes, he works to ensure that there is no hope at all.
And while it’s interesting that all of these high-profile Republicans are making the exact same bad arguments in a variety of forums around the same time, it’s also interesting that this is happening at all. One gets the impression that public opinion on the issue — which is strongly against the administration’s position — might actually be making Karl Rove nervous.