Kinsley on Bush on Stem Cells
This from Michael Kinsley’s review of Decision Points:
There is one big issue during Bush’s presidency that he not only got wrong, but seems to have totally misunderstood. That is stem cells. “At its core,” Bush writes ponderously, “the stem cell question harked back to the philosophical clash between science and morality.”
To call this a question of science versus morality is to stack the deck. Obviously morality wins. But what is immoral about stem cell research? Bush talks about how “new technologies like 3-D ultrasounds” will help “more Americans recognize the humanity of unborn babies.” He seems to think an embryo is like a fetus — a tiny human being — rather than what it is: a clump of a few dozen cells, invisible without a microscope, unthinking and unfeeling. Nature itself — or God himself, if you’re a believer — destroys most of the embryos it creates every year in miscarriages (usually before a woman even knows she’s pregnant). Thousands more are created and destroyed or frozen in fertility clinics — which Bush has no problem with and may even have used himself. (He and Laura, he says, tried unsuccessfully to have a baby and were ready to adopt when suddenly they had twins.) A very few of those surplus embryos from fertility clinics are used in stem cell research. By what logic do you bar the use of those few to do some real good, while ignoring all the others that come and go without doing any good for anyone?
Totally agree with Kinsley. I can’t believe this subject is even controversial.
And yet from whence emerge fetuses? It’s less of a religious or even moral question than one about when life starts. If the cells are the natural result of miscarriage, etc., then it is, and Kinsley suggests, a no-brainer. However, embryos are what starts life. And I’m not aware of any man or woman–any creature,for that matter–that did not start that way. Ending life electively has legal import.
I never really understood the stem cell debate. The argument that stem cell research would become the slippery slope that leads to more abortions seems too simplistic a view.
A stem cell is not a human being. It does not have rights. It is not entitled to due process. It is not what the founders were thinking about when the wrote “all men are endowed by their creator with ….”
I don’t understand how religious conservatives can be against stem cell research yet be for In vitro fertilization and not the other way around. Stem cell research can potentially save lives that exist, while IVF creates life where one potentially should not exist.
“…when life starts.”
4 billion years ago?
John: This isn’t a book review, just Kinsley’s usual smarmy attack. I want back the five minutes I wasted reading it.
Understanding the viewpoint of others requires empathy and the ability to think abstractly. Maybe if Kinsley had taken debate he would be better able to do so.
A cost-benefit analysis tips toward the research.
Then again, could you really say that a cost-benefit analysis of experimenting on retarded people or underdeveloped cultures isn’t justified?