Charles Krauthammer would have supported the lifting of the ban on spending federal money on research on stem cell lines left over from spare IVF embryos. However, he found the way that Obama patted himself on the back for placing science over ideology while abdicating decision-making on cloning embryos or creating embryos solely for research. Krauthammer draws the line where I would draw it - allowing the research on those spare embryos at fertility clinics that will get discarded anyway, but not permitting the creation of embryos solely for their use in research.
On this, Obama has nothing to say. He leaves it entirely to the scientists. This is more than moral abdication. It is acquiescence to the mystique of "science" and its inherent moral benevolence. How anyone as sophisticated as Obama can believe this within living memory of Mengele and Tuskegee and the fake (and coercive) South Korean stem cell research is hard to fathom.
Krauthammer was invited to the signing ceremony but declined to go. Now he's glad because he was appalled by the moral preening and self-satisfaction Obama's statement about how he's being so much more respectful of science unlike the ideological George W. Bush.
The other part -- the ostentatious issuance of a memorandum on "restoring scientific integrity to government decision-making" -- would have made me walk out.
Restoring? The implication, of course, is that while Obama is guided solely by science, Bush was driven by dogma, ideology and politics.
What an outrage. George Bush's nationally televised stem cell speech was the most morally serious address on medical ethics ever given by an American president. It was so scrupulous in presenting the best case for both his view and the contrary view that until the last few minutes, the listener had no idea where Bush would come out.
Obama's address was morally unserious in the extreme. It was populated, as his didactic discourses always are, with a forest of straw men. Such as his admonition that we must resist the "false choice between sound science and moral values." Yet, exactly 2 minutes and 12 seconds later he went on to declare that he would never open the door to the "use of cloning for human reproduction."
Does he not think that a cloned human would be of extraordinary scientific interest? And yet he banned it.
Is he so obtuse not to see that he had just made a choice of ethics over science? Yet, unlike President Bush, who painstakingly explained the balance of ethical and scientific goods he was trying to achieve, Obama did not even pretend to make the case why some practices are morally permissible and others not.
This is not just intellectual laziness. It is the moral arrogance of a man who continuously dismisses his critics as ideological while he is guided exclusively by pragmatism (in economics, social policy, foreign policy) and science in medical ethics.
Science has everything to say about what is possible. Science has nothing to say about what is permissible. Obama's pretense that he will "restore science to its rightful place" and make science, not ideology, dispositive in moral debates is yet more rhetorical sleight of hand -- this time to abdicate decision-making and color his own ideological preferences as authentically "scientific."
Dr. James Thomson, the discoverer of embryonic stem cells, said "if human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough." Obama clearly has not.
Meanwhile, check out this clunker from
Bill Clinton who doesn't seem to have a clue what an embryo is.
4 comments:
Obama has two sets of rules: One for him and one for everyone else!
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1538679/is_president_obama_a_narcissist.html?singlepage=true&cat=75
mB
Holy crap! I had no idea that Bill Clinton's entire academic experience was void of even a basic course on biology. I had never seen that Gupta - Clinton clip before and I am appalled.
Further, how could Gupta just sit there and listen to Clinton without offering him a chance to correct the error? The doctor must have been so shocked on the first repetition that he became dumbfounded and could not wait to end the interview following the third.
Not only is "Magic Mouth" Obama in over his head, but he has chosen advisors whose sole ability, so far, at least, has been to defeat John McCain, and McCain aided and abetted them in 50% of even that task. And his advisors still have him in campaign mode as if they haven't any more idea than Geithner what to do next except spew campaign slogans. Polls show the halo is slipping inch by inch.
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