bush's idiocy: why I should not be surprised

The president of the US ruined a perfectly good workout for me yesterday. There I was, happily on the elliptical machine with my Marie Claire mag and Beyonce in my ear. For some odd reason, I decided to look up at the TVs in the gym and caught a glimpse of Bush on CNN with babies in the background. I knew the Stem Cell bill was gonna fall on his desk Wednesday. I had a small hope that it wouldn't get vetoed, but my cynical, Dem self knew better. So Bush staged this little press conference to announce his veto with all of these formerly frozen embryos (now grown kids) in the background.

How like Bush to ignore public opinion. Afterall, a vast majority of the public supports stem cell research. On Tuesday, the Senate voted 63-37 in favor of easing limits on federal funding of stem cell research. That means a great deal of Republicans voted in favor of this measure. Although more still needs to be done, stem cell research holds great promise in finding cures for diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's and treatment for quadriplegics and paraplegics.

I honestly don't feel that this is a major setback for researchers. That's because the major setback occurred almost 5 years ago--Aug. 9, 2001--when Bush announced that federally funded research would stop at the 20 already existing stem cell lines. The day marked the beginning of our slip down the research pipe line. You see, other countries (the UK for example) are still plugging away at this. In fact, we are losing researchers to these countries that are funding this research (if they don't leave the country, they could always head over to Cali which is big on stem cell research).

Sure, I'm disappointed. I'm disappointed that our researchers are lagging behind. I'm disappointed that our President doesn't care about what the public thinks (I said 'disappointed', not 'surprised'). But what really upsets me is that these frozen embryos he's so desperately trying to protect will end up getting discarded anyways if they're not used. These potential human beings he speaks of are getting trashed. Wouldn't a better alternative be to use them for research to produce a cure for Parkinson's or cancer or whatever?

You see, we're sacrificing science for ideology. And that's really disappointing.