When a minority of the House of Representatives blocked a Senate bill that passed 100-0, authored by pro ESCR Senator Arlen Specter and anti ESCR Rick Santorum, which would have funded research into “alternative sources” of obtaining pluripotent stem cells, they voted against science and ethics—as this column in NRO by Robert P. George and Eric Cohen demonstrates. Their conclusion:
“[M]embers of the House who voted against the Specter-Santorum bill did not choose all effective avenues of science or all ethical avenues of science. Instead, they would support only ethically controversial stem-cell research. They would support the research only if it involves the destruction of embryos. Otherwise, they are not interested.
“That is not a position for the advancement of science on all fronts, but for keeping a political issue alive even as science advances and leaves it behind. It is hard to imagine a more blatant example of political cynicism overpowering a constructive solution.”
Thankfully, President Bush stated in his East Room speech that he plans to remedy this failure via executive order. The sooner, the better.
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