Smart e-mail:

A couple of nice pieces up on Reagan’s speech this morning–especially Robby
George’s. But it seems to me you guys haven’t pointed out one very relevant
point: by pulling his bait and switch and arguing for federal funding of
cloning for research rather than of stem cell research with “left over” IVF
embryos, Ron Reagan was actually disagreeing not only with George W. Bush
but also with John Kerry and the Democratic party.
The main Democratic alternative to the Bush policy (the “Stem Cell Research
Enhancement Act of 2004″ introduced on June 24th as HR 4682) says funding
should be permitted only if “The stem cells were derived from human embryos
that have been donated from in vitro fertilization clinics, were created for
the purposes of fertility treatment, and were in excess of the clinical need
of the individuals seeking such treatment.” This means it would not permit
funding for the process Ron Reagan described: cloning a human embryo and
then destroying it to extract its stem cells.
The other Democratic alternative (the appallingly named “Ronald Reagan
Memorial Stem Cell Research Act of 2004″ introduced June 9th as HR 4531)
says funding should be allocated in accordance with NIH guidelines proposed
in 2000, and these guidelines (65 Fed. Reg. 51,975) say clearly that “Areas
of research ineligible for NIH funding” include “Research utilizing human
pluripotent stem cells that were derived using somatic cell nuclear
transfer, i.e., the transfer of a human somatic cell nucleus into a human or
animal egg.” (You can read those proposed guidelines here)
This again means that what Reagan advocated would not be permitted. So he
was not supporting the Democratic position, but rather advocating something
they have opposed. He ended his speech by calling on people to vote for what
he described on November 2nd, but no one running supports what he described,
and neither does the public. Seems to me he made a bit of a misstep here,
and the Dems should be forced to say whether, like him, they advocate
taxpayer funded cloning.