News from Around the World

Just to rehash, the House had the audacity to defy Bush and vote to give federal funding to embryonic stem cell research. And this included loyal Republicans, who obviously don’t equate a pre-embryo in a petri dish with a living person.

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again, where are the protests against fertility clinics and research? The number of pre-embryos used thus far in stem cell research is minute, but hundreds of thousands have been destroyed in fertility research and clinical use. So where are the so-called pro-lifers, with their picket signs and protests? Why the silence about fertility research? Is this a sacred cow, or what?

That’s right, Dubya, read the fine print. What the bill would do is use embryos that are designated for destruction–get that Bush? They are designated to be thrown into the trash, those precious little pre-embryos that you love so much. Only this bill would provide federal funding for them to be used in stem cell research.

Lawmakers were lobbied by patients and their families - and even by one of their own. Rep. Jim Langevin, R-R.I., whose spine was severed in a gun accident as a teen, said from his wheelchair that he believed that embryonic stem cell research “is very consistent'’ with his opposition to abortion.