Five Years Ago Today
Posted by on August 9, 2006 at 02:35 PM
Five years ago today President Bush stood before America and declared his intention to limit federal funding of stem cell research. The scientific community had lobbied him aggressively on the issue, bringing before the administration and the Congress evidence of the promise the research had to offer and the hope for cures for millions of Americans.
The President decided to use his first prime time speech, not to announce a forward-thinking hopeful investment into scientific research for millions of Americans, but to cater to the extreme religious right-wing of his Republican Party. He limited research to a few select lines of cells that were already in existence, a limitation that has hindered progress and discovery.
This year the House and Senate overwhelmingly approved of legislation that would have expanded the President's narrow-minded decision of 2001. For five years Americans have continued suffer from some of the worst diseases of our time, like Diabetes, spinal cord injuries and Alzheimer’s, while scientific research has been held back. The lines of cells that President Bush designated have proven contaminated and unusable.
A national poll, conducted by the Opinion Research Corporation, found that 72 percent of Americans support embryonic stem cell research, up from 68 percent in 2005. Despite this wide-spread support, despite the possibilities and the hope this research offers, the President vetoed this legislation to please a minority of the extremely conservative religious right-wing of the Republican party. He put politics before science, before the welfare of the American people. He used his first veto to kill this life-saving legislation.
Congresswoman Degette responded to his veto during the Democratic Radio address saying:
The President exercised the first veto of his presidency on this law. President Bush has signed bills to give subsidies to Big Oil, to give tax cuts to the wealthiest few, and subsidies to HMOs, but he could not find it in his heart to give hope to America's families, proudly boasting that he was protecting America from crossing a 'moral line.'I, too, want to talk about morality. A moral society has an ethical imperative to help cure diseases that affect 110 million Americans and their families. We owe that to the child with Type I diabetes, the brother with Parkinson's, the police officer paralyzed by a criminal's bullet.
I am tempted to point out the obvious - the President's veto had nothing to do with morals. It had everything to do with cold, calculated, cynical political gain - the kind of politics that snuffs out the candle of hope, and that condemns the disabled and the sick.
Governor Dean also spoke out, in an e-mail to millions of Americans he wrote:
As a medical doctor I'm offended at the political meddling in potentially life-saving research. All of our families could be touched by hope found through stem cell research: from juvenile diabetes to Alzheimer's, it offers the opportunity for new cures. Yet this important research has been dwindling because of restrictions put in place by Bush five years ago.That's half a decade we have lost. How much longer will those suffering and their families have to wait?
People can disagree in good faith on this issue, but Bush's extraordinary action doesn't meet that threshold -- it smacks of political calculation. The opportunity to save lives of people with debilitating diseases, and to reduce suffering for them and their families, requires that a president respect the will of the people and the Congress.
The bottom line is that the President, and Republicans, can not be trusted to put the best interests of the American people first. Whether it is giving huge tax breaks to oil companies or drug companies that make billions in profit, or caving in to a minority of ultra-conservative extremists - the Republican Party has nothing to offer the vast majority of Americans but empty rhetoric and hollow leadership.
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