President Bush’s decision unnecessarily restricts embryonic stem cell research. As Christopher Reeves has stated, these restrictions will inevitably slow medical progress and impede research for finding treatments and cures for serious illnesses.
Rather than being careful and cautious, Bush’s decision is irresponsible. Americans should not be fooled: this is no compromise. Bush is allowing political calculations to interfere with science and medical advances. How did the United States come to a position that the well-being of a few frozen cells is more important than alleviating the suffering of millions of living human beings in the US and worldwide?
While Bush worries about theological implications of the human potential of frozen embryos that will only be discarded, millions of suffering people will have to wait longer or may never find a cure.
Tragically, anti-abortion extremist politics is again interfering with the health and welfare of American women and men. What makes this even more outrageous is the United States — the richest country on the earth with the largest medical establishment – is hindering the development of a promising avenue to treat serious illnesses. How many times will conservative religious interests be allowed to slow human progress? The Roman Catholic hierarchy only at the end of the 20th Century recognized that Galileo in the Middle Ages was right. Can we really afford to wait this long again?
