AS AMERICA laid Ronald Reagan to rest, President George W.Bush spoke a eulogy on behalf of the former president, an actor whose final role was his most painful, one of 4.5 million Americans suffering from Alzheimer's. That number will nearly double by 2030, according to the Alzheimer's Association, and the loss of its most public face only underscores the pressing need for the most current and cutting-edge research, the sort of research currently under gag order by the very man speaking platitudes at Reagan's memorial.
Over three years ago, the National Institutes of Health released a statement that stem cell research "holds enormous promise and the potential to revolutionize the practice of medicine and improve the quality and length of life." The stem cells in question, which are harvested from excess embryos created for in-vitro fertilization may hold the key to developing treatments and cures for ailments including stroke, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, Parkinson's disease, spinal cord injury and burns, as well as Alzheimer's. Around the time of this report, ABC News conducted a poll of Americans on their opinions on such research, and the results indicated a public support of such methods. According to the poll, 60 percent of Americans support not only such research, but government funding of it. Even among opponents of legal abortion, opposition to stem cell research falls just short of a majority, at 50 percent.
With the scientific promise and public endorsement of stem cell research, President Bush was given the opportunity to herald in a new age of medical advancement through expanded support of the studies, or, at least, a continuation of the Clinton administration's policy of federally funding them. Yet barely two months after the NIH report, Bush signed an executive order banning funding for researching on new embryonic stem cell lines. He cited existing embryonic lines as sufficient to sustain research, but scientists and lawmakers have since pointed out that a mere 19 such lines are available to researchers, hardly enough to maintain any sort of progress or development in cures and treatments for deadly diseases. In fact, many medical professionals note that of these few embryonic lines, most are tainted with mouse cells from other experiments.
President Bush cites supposed moral questions surrounding the research as justification for the ban, but even many prominent abortion opponents have spoken in favor of lifting it. The harvesting of stem cells is not the destruction of a fetus, but rather that of an embryonic byproduct of in-vitro fertilization. The excess embryos are created through the in-vitro methods regardless of the ban and, if not used for stem cell research, are simply destroyed. As Michael Kinsley recently pointed out in Time magazine, "Restricting stem-cell research doesn't actually spare the lives of any embryos, which means the lives of real people desperately awaiting the fruits of stem-cell research are being weighed against a purely symbolic message."
Legislators of both parties have recognized as much in recent days. In April, 206 House members signed a letter urging the president to ease the restrictions. On June 4, the day before Reagan's death, 58 senators followed suit. Among these senators were 14 Republicans, including anti-abortion conservatives. When the administration dispatched First Lady Laura Bush to restate its flawed policy in the week following, her remarks on a "very delicate balance between what we want to do for science and for research and what is ethically and morally right to do" seemed grossly inadequate in a response to Nancy Reagan, another First Lady who in recent months had publicly pleaded with the administration to allow the progress of "a hope called stem-cell research, which may provide our scientists with many answers that have for so long been beyond our grasp," answers that could have saved her husband's life. "I just don't see how we can turn our backs on this," implored Mrs. Reagan, yet this administration has done exactly that.
As Bush's presumptive November opponent Democratic Sen. John Kerry noted recently, there was once vocal opposition to heart transplants on alleged "ethical and moral" grounds as well. The extremists speaking out against stem cell research are on the wrong side of history, and American lives are being needlessly lost every day that President Bush panders to their radicalism.
It is not enough for George W. Bush to speak his respects to a president lost; his actions must pay respect to the Alzheimer's patient lost as well.
Katie Cristol is a Cavalier Daily viewpoint writer.
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