Did Bush Do the Right Thing?
Arthur Caplan and others weigh in on the president’s decision.

Compiled by Kathryn Jean Lopez, NRO executive editor
August 10, 2001 9:20 a.m.

David Prentice, professor of life sciences, Indiana State University & adviser to Sen. Sam Brownback (R., Kan.)

President Bush's compromise decision on human-embryonic-stem-cell research was both heartening and disappointing. Heartening because he made it clear that no taxpayer dollars would go toward the killing of any more human embryos. Disappointing because he opted for a political compromise in an attempt to satisfy everyone. Federal dollars will now be used to reward the recent destruction of human life for what is certainly tainted and scientifically questionable research. Human life was still purposely destroyed to derive the existing human-embryonic stem cells. And how will these cells be certified as existing before the president's announcement, versus produced by further destruction of human embryos? What happens when and if researchers provide one actually successful result and proclaim the need for many more cell lines? After 20 years of experiments with mouse embryonic stem-cell lines, little evidence exists that embryonic stem cells will ever make good on any of the promises being made to patients. Meanwhile, adult-stem-cell research continues to show the path to real benefits for patients, and without harm to any human being.

Jonah Goldberg, editor, NRO

"Once again, the president has done the bare minimum in order to try and publicly posture himself with the majority of the Americans," declared House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt in a scathing response to President Bush's decision to support continued research of existing stem-cell lines. This is a funny criticism coming from a politician who has done the bare maximum to publicly posture to the majority of Americans. After all, Gephardt was once a reliably pro-life Democrat, but switched when the breeze on his finger switched directions.

Still, even if the messenger lacks moral authority, the message remains interesting. Did Bush thread the needle? Did he maintain the principle while accommodating the public's desire for further testing? Or did he, like Gephardt before him, violate a fundamental moral principle simply to placate the demands of politics?

I think he did. By using only existing stem-cell lines, Bush in effect said, "In the past, the federal government killed your fellow man in order to further medical science. That was wrong. We shall stop. But, of those already dead, that research shall continue." This may seem like a great moral indignity to some. But it doesn't to me. Indeed, for me, the most compelling pro-life argument against what he did comes from Michael Novak. If Bush blundered, he blundered strategically not morally. "President Bush will now have to fight off roaring dragons," Novak argues "to hold on to the shrinking piece of ground he has left himself to defend." This may, in fact, make it very difficult to stop greater and less restricted funding of embryonic-stem-cell research in the future. But that's essentially a slippery-slope argument and such arguments are always about the hypothetical rather than the here and now. And in the here and now, I think Bush did ok.

Christopher Reeve, chairman of the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation (in a statement)

President Bush's decision today to allow federal funding for human-embryonic-stem-cell research on a limited basis is a step in the right direction. However, this political compromise may seriously hinder progress toward finding treatments and cures for a wide variety of diseases and disorders that affect 100 million Americans.

By allowing scientists access even to 60 existing stem-cell lines, the president is still limiting the pace and effectiveness of federally supported research. Scientists may need to use an unknown number of cell lines and should not be restricted to those that presently exist.

Recent polls show that an overwhelming majority of Americans support research within the guidelines of the National Institutes of Health adopted during the Clinton administration. Few issues enjoy broader bipartisan support in Congress. The Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation supports President Bush's appointment of an advisory council on stem-cell research and welcomes the opportunity to serve on such a council.

Because of the President's decision, it may now be up to Congress to enact legislation that will enable scientists to fully explore the potential of human embryonic-stem-cell research."

Michael Schwartz, vice president for government relations, Concerned Women for America

One of two things is bound to happen. Either the research on the embryonic stem-cell lines the president has authorized will produce some therapeutic advance, or it will not. In the first instance, the pressure to broaden the funding will be irresistible, because it works. In the latter case, blame for the lack of progress will fall on the president for his timid failure to commit enough resources to scientific progress, and the resentment against him will grow along with the frustration over the lack of results. Having discarded any principled basis for resisting the broadening of research funding, he will have no option but to permit more and more. Once you start sliding down a slippery slope, there is no stopping until you hit bottom.

The president was confronted with a stark choice between good and evil. He was afraid to go either way, and tried to find a middle ground that would please pretty near everyone. So he chose a little bit of evil, and now he has the wolf by the ears.

Lewis Charles Murtaugh, research fellow, Dept. of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University

Right off the bat, full disclosure: While I don't work with human ES cells, I have a number of friends and colleagues who do. On their behalf, and because I believe that ES cell research is the most promising route to many cures, I let out a sigh of relief at the news of President Bush's compromise. And yet...I would be much happier with this development if the only politicians on my side were cut from the mold of Bill Frist and Orrin Hatch. ESCR opponents will object that the ends do not justify the means, but at least Frist and Hatch have the right ends in view, i.e. alleviating disease and suffering. Their opponents in the pro-life movement are similarly sincere in their views. In contrast, I suspect that many on the Left know and care little about the science, but see ESCR itself as a means to a more questionable end, the shoring-up of abortion rights from blastocyst to birth. Bush cannot possibly hope to sway these voters, ESCR or no; the question is whether as many moderates will be won over as conservatives are alienated. In the meantime, well-meaning scientists are in the hot seat, as the culture wars finally invade the research laboratory.

Michael Ledeen, fellow, American Enterprise Institute & NRO contributing editor

I thought it was a hell of a good speech. It fit the problem very well, he demonstrated a gravitas that we haven't seen enough of, and he was obviously in full command of the subject. I was pleased with the final phrase, when he said he hoped he'd made the right decision.

There may not be a right decision, and there may not even be a decision that matters. While it is not true, as so many believe, that scientific genies can't be put back in political bottles, there are some that clearly escape capture, and my guess is that this is one of them. There will be lots of clandestine labs, and some very public ones-like Professor Antinori's — that will clone, that will use any stem cells they can get (and the Chinese will provide any body part for a price), and will keep pushing the envelope. The desire for immortality will, I have little doubt, eventually overwhelm the defenses of the virtuous, even such a pillar of virtue as Leon Kass, surely the best choice to head the new oversight body.

But we can hope that W's fine speech will do some good, by elevating the debate, by showing the public that politicians can grapple with truly profound problems with modesty and dignity, and that this president is trying very hard to advance our interests, moral as well as material. Did someone say "solomonic"?

Chris Currie, who has been insulin-dependent with type I diabetes for 28 years. He lives with his wife and two young children in Hyattsville, Md.

While there are sighs of relief this morning that the president's proposed limiting federal funding to cell lines already established, troubling questions remain. By rewarding the human-experimentation industry with tax dollars for its grisly fruits, the federal government maintains a morally problematic proximity to the acts which killed some of the most vulnerable members of the human species. Moreover, both the principle and the mechanism by which these embryos perished remains intact. The idea that the government can foster good ends from evil means has become policy, while the freedom of researchers to create new cell lines by destroying countless more embryos using private money continues unchecked. What in the new administration policy will prevent future embryonic-stem-cell lines from receiving the same sanction as those "grandfathered" last night? President Bush may have felt he exercised the wisdom of Solomon with his compromise, but the wise king saved the baby. Last night, we were left to contemplate babies already slaughtered, and the president parceling out the remains.

Arthur L. Caplan, director, Center of Bioethics, University of Pennsylvania

When is a compromise not a compromise? When a president declares a compromise but in actuality takes one side of an issue.

President Bush gave an articulate and sincere speech. He proclaimed he had found a compromise on the thorny ethical question of stem-cell research. But, while his rhetoric was beyond reproach, the substance of his supposed compromise is nothing of the sort.

The president declared that he would permit federal funding of existing cell lines created from human embryos. There are, he said, 60 stem lines available worldwide from destroyed human embryos and these could be obtained by scientists seeking to research on stem cells with federal money.

By limiting research to these cell lines Bush in effect banned federal funding for human-embryo-stem-cell research. Most of the 60 cell lines that already exist in the world will not be of much use to would-be researchers in this country. Many of these cells lines are owned by companies who will only make them available if the price is right. Other cell lines are close to losing their potency making them worthless for further research. And still others have been manipulated in ongoing research to the point where there is no practical way to make any use of them in new experiments.

I believe the president when he says he truly wants to meet the needs of the disabled, diseased, and dying. But his '"compromise" will do nothing of the sort. The only real hope for doing serious research on human-embryonic stem cells is to use human embryos to create those stem cells. Existing cell lines simply are not going to do the job that is required.

Why did the president decide against destroying embryos to get stem cells? In his speech he said that all human life is sacred and that it is wrong to experiment on something that is going to be destroyed. Neither view seems ethically sound.

Not all human embryos can be treated as morally equal. Most of the tens of thousands that are frozen in tanks all around this nation are the unfortunate, unwanted remains of attempts to treat infertility. They are not human life, nor are they alive nor are the vast majority of them even potential human lives.

Many were put aside and frozen as malformed. Others are miswired having come from women who eggs had lost their potency. Those that have been frozen for more than five years will never be put into a womb for the purposes of making a baby by any responsible doctor because they have almost no chance of becoming a baby. The president declared these embryos to be equal in moral worth to crippled children and those confined to wheelchairs due to spinal-cord injury, traumatic brain injuries, strokes, and Parkinsonism. They are not.

The president also argued that it would be wrong to experiment on embryos which are going to be destroyed. But he never said why. He simply asserted this as a moral fact. He is wrong again. If you have embryos that are going to be destroyed then if their destruction is an ethical act, which I would maintain it is for those embryos that cannot become babies, then there is no moral harm in accomplishing their destruction by putting them into research.

The president sought a compromise. But he wound up advancing a non-solution. Patients, the disabled, their families and research scientists are not likely to be mollified. The president compromised his compromise because the American people will not be persuaded by the moral position that it rests upon.

Sen. Sam Brownback (R., Kan.) in a statement

I am pleased the president has made a strong, clear statement about the need to ban human cloning and stopping the creation of human life for research purposes. Throughout human history, we've learned the painful lesson of using one class of human beings for the benefit of others. It was wrong then, it is wrong now.

I am saddened by the president's decision to allow taxpayer dollars to fund the use of stem cells derived from young humans.

We already have success with adult stem cells in treating human diseases without the moral dilemma posed by embryonic-stem-cell research. We should substantially increase the funding for adult-stem-cell research rather than research on young humans — a practice which is opposed by millions of American taxpayers."

Michael Fumento, fellow, the Hudson Institute

Until now, President Bush has been to the art of compromise what Andy Warhol was to art. It was time for him stop trying to please everyone and simply do the right thing. With stem-cell research, he has.

It's not clear how many human-embryonic-stem-cell lines already exist. But all it really takes is one line to create an inexhaustible source of cells that can be used by any number of labs.

These cells cannot be considered human beings. The embryos whence they were extracted are long dead. Allowing federal funding for experimentation with them does not sanction those deaths.

Meanwhile, the stunning breakthroughs that have characterized stem-cell research over the last few years will continue. Most will continue come from non-embryonic stem cells, notwithstanding the claims of the mainstream media and so many politicians and pundits that non-embryonic stem cells are A) not nearly as useful as embryonic cells, B) utterly worthless, or C) in fact don't even exist.

Indeed, one of the great unspokens in this vastly lopsided "debate" was that much of the pressure for taxpayer-funded embryonic research has been because funds have overwhelmingly gone to non-embryonic work. Mayhaps these investors have know all along what others have tried to hide.

R Nathan Slotnick MD, director, Reproductive Genetics, Maternal-Fetal Medicine, Eastern Virginia Medical School

By far the most fascinating component of the political and media focus on the stem cell and its clinical potential, is how quickly and powerfully the questions have come to our nation's attention. Ten years ago cloning, stem cells, and reproductive technologies were largely unknown in the general population and, for the most part, did not register on the national media's radar. In the span of weeks, the nation's attention has become focused on this sophisticated area of clinical experimentation. But attention without understanding creates only misunderstanding and distrust. Although I commend the president for what is clearly a successful "education" in this field and for his thoughtful and flexible reconsideration of his former policy, I'm troubled that the nation, as a whole understands the issues and complexities far less well. Our representatives' and media's comments clearly demonstrate how poorly they comprehend the complexities of these issues.

We are scientists and clinicians working in an exciting and promising area of research. We should recognize that our responsibilities extend beyond the lab to the scientific education of all. Our nation's biotechnical decisions should be educated and informed.