With the Middle East going up in flames, North Korea launching missiles aimed at Hawaii (and falling far short) and China gearing up militarily for a showdown with the West, it can be hard to focus on domestic issues that really matter to us in everyday life. Somewhere between trying to convince a sovereign nation and their foe terrorist organization to have a ceasefire, President Bush snuck his very first veto passed a distracted populace.
President Bush carried through today (July 19th) on his long-stated threat and vetoed legislation that would have permitted federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.
The president, in exercising the first veto of his presidency, said the research amounts to murder, but patient advocacy groups and many medical researchers said it holds extraordinary promise to help cure disease. source
Here we have a man who has never met a spending bill he hasn’t passed but got all uppity and indignant when somebody, say congress, had the audacity to want to move the field of medical science ahead a few years. I am particularly galled by this news not only because I think his reasoning is flawed but also because I cannot stand when a politician panders to his base to the exclusion and detriment of the rest of us.
Now I’m not going to start sounding off like John Edwards or John Kerry did in the run-up to the 2004 Presidential Election and proclaim that if this bill had passed, tomorrow would be the end of disease as we know it. First, the bill only forbids federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, leaving that domain strictly to the private sector. Given the public sectors propensity for slowing things down to a fault and screwing things up to a fair-thee-well, that may be a blessing in disguise. Presumably there will still be federal funding available for all the other various stem cell research being conducted across the country. In addition, though scientists are very positive on the potential of stem cell research to cure various diseases, non-embryonic stem cell research is no slouch either.
Still, none of this excuses Bush’s sad and rather obvious attempt to curry favor with the Christian fundamentalists in this country that are probably the single biggest threat to science since the Dark Ages of Europe. Playing to a crowd of people whom generations ago hung women they thought were witches and executed others for saying the world was round rather than flat, President Bush said, “This bill would support the taking of innocent human life in the hope of finding medical benefits for others. It crosses a moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect, so I vetoed it.”
Of course by saying this he is assuming we are all in agreement about when human life begins and what it means to be a human life. The ilk he was pandering to would tell you that life begins at conception and that life is as precious as say my wife’s life. Mind you, wife is 26 years old and has had all the experiences that make her a unique individual as opposed to a series of genes in a fertilized egg.
This debate begs the question, is all human life equal. If Bush is to be believed here, he certainly seems to think so. He will tell you that the above egg is as important as my wife’s life. In the eyes of our fair president, both the egg and my wife are of equal value. I can assure you, she’d disagree with that equation.
My wife was born with and developed over her years a series of genetic disorders, which, some day, if the advances in stem cell research are allowed to bloom, may in fact be curable. In order of her afflictions, she’s had chronic ear and throat infections since the age of 1 and these days has tubes in her ears, which she can’t get water in and make flying in an airplane an arduous chore. She developed asthma between the ages of 4 and 5, which then only compounded the infections issue.
At the age of 12, before women’s science was a well-studied field, she developed Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS).
PCOS is a health problem that can affect a woman’s menstrual cycle, fertility, hormones, insulin production, heart, blood vessels, and appearance. Women with PCOS have these characteristics:
*high levels of male hormones, also called androgens
*an irregular or no menstrual cycle
*may or may not have many small cysts in their ovaries. Cysts are fluid-filled sacs.
PCOS is the most common hormonal reproductive problem in women of childbearing age.
Unfortunately for my lovely wife, at the aforementioned tender age of 12, she had cysts on her ovaries the size of a small nerf football. Incidentally, her father at the time thought she was faking it so she wouldn’t have to go to school. You can only guess what this sort of ordeal might do to ones psyche.
Giving a 12 – 13 year old girl birth control pills (specifically to stop the production of cysts, not because she was having teenage sex) back in 1992 in a semi-rural town in Ohio was for her an embarrassing and scarring incident in this young girls life but that was not even the worst yet to come. At 15 years old she developed, again from crap genetics, both Hashimoto's Thyroiditis and Osteoarthritis.
The former is defined as, “a type of autoimmune thyroid disease in which the immune system attacks and destroys the thyroid gland. The thyroid helps set the rate of metabolism, which is the rate at which the body uses energy. Hashimoto’s stops the gland from making enough thyroid hormones for the body to work the way it should. It is the most common thyroid disease in the U.S.”
It is also a precursor to cancer, especially in her family.
The latter is defined as, “the most common type of arthritis, especially among older people. Sometimes it is called degenerative joint disease or osteoarthrosis.
Osteoarthritis is a joint disease that mostly affects the cartilage (KAR-til-uj). Cartilage is the slippery tissue that covers the ends of bones in a joint. Healthy cartilage allows bones to glide over one another. It also absorbs energy from the shock of physical movement. In osteoarthritis, the surface layer of cartilage breaks down and wears away. This allows bones under the cartilage to rub together, causing pain, swelling, and loss of motion of the joint. Over time, the joint may lose its normal shape. Also, bone spurs--small growths called osteophytes--may grow on the edges of the joint. Bits of bone or cartilage can break off and float inside the joint space. This causes more pain and damage.
People with osteoarthritis usually have joint pain and limited movement. Unlike some other forms of arthritis, osteoarthritis affects only joints and not internal organs.”
Now you can imagine what that must have like for a teenager to have been afflicted with a disease that one should not be getting until they are much older.
My wife would also go on to develop insulin resistance, the precursor to diabetes, severe allergies to pollutants and environmental elements (grass, trees, cats, etc.), Temporo Mandibular Joint (TMJ), and genetic obesity. Despite these challenges she managed to find a way to live, become an optician, own a house and find man who loves her.
But her president, cause he owes his current position of high power to the Bible Belt, seems to not care whether or not she has these problems or if she lives or dies. These are the consequences for making such a shortsighted decision. Bush has accomplished nothing more than causing my wife possibly more years of discomfort, psychological pain, possible bankruptcy to pay for all of her medications and the sadness of knowing that the most powerful man in the world cares not for her well being.
Again, embryonic stem cell research is not the miracle cure of the future, but it is part and parcel of the scientific community dedicated to helping people like my wife live a life that is worth living. Not the life of a fertilized egg, but the life of a real live energetic and productive modern woman. If that is not worth the price of a few votes then Mr. Bush nor any politician who believes this tripe deserves to be a public servant.
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