Stemming the Tide
EDITORIAL Stemming the Tide On Thursday evening, August 9, George W. Bush delivered the first prime-time special presidential address of the twenty-first century. No one would have predicted a few...
...Research on existing stem cell lines requires no harvesting of new stem cells, and thus no further destruction of embryos...
...For this speech can only finally be judged in the context of the president's later actions...
...Instead, he laid out the competing arguments fairly and intelligently...
...Here, Bush's speech may ultimately prove more important than his decision...
...But after August 9, we are entitled to hope—and, yes, to expect—that President Bush understands his obligations in this defining moment, on this defining issue, of the twenty-first century...
...Will he fight in a committed and serious way in Congress in defense of his position...
...It was altogether an admirable performance...
...After all, the subject had gone unmentioned in last fall's campaign debates...
...One could even say that it made a major contribution to the health of American public discourse...
...And, on the whole, an auspicious one...
...Then they will seek federal funding for the creation and destruction of embryos themselves, claiming that this will provide higher quality stem cells...
...And if he is unwilling to continue making public arguments, if he doesn't treat his August 9 speech as the beginning, not the end, of his responsibilities, then the speech will be a mere footnote in the history of his presidency...
...Bush's speech was both morally and intellectually serious...
...Nor was it discussed in Bush's Inaugural or State of the Union addresses...
...Its respect for the intelligence of its listeners...
...He explained what was at stake, and how to think about it...
...its recognition that there will have to be public guidance, regulation, and limitation of scientific and, yes, medical progress—these are no small contributions to the possibility of a serious conversation on this topic among the American people...
...But the president's position is defensible...
...The president would permit funding of research only on existing embryonic stem cell lines...
...Future stem cell lines will be created in the private sector, and scientists will claim that research on them is needed for further medical progress—and therefore deserves funding...
...Could Bush's decision—and just as important, his speech—have the effect of reopening some issues that deserve serious public debate...
...Our worry is that the president may have drawn a distinction that will be difficult to sustain...
...On the other hand, we are already on that slope, and have been for quite some time...
...its manifest willingness to take seriously the "ethical minefields" and "moral concerns" raised by the new genetics...
...Bush's speech may ultimately prove more important than his decision, reopening issues that deserve serious public debate...
...Slippery slope arguments are generally a substitute for serious thought...
...William Kristol...
...We are inclined to think that not even that research should be funded...
...We say this although we must disagree in part with his decision...
...All other embryonic stem cell research requires the harvesting of the stem cells from an embryo, which is destroyed...
...But in this case, the slope really is extraordinarily slippery, and moral seriousness requires taking that slipperiness into consideration...
...Having started such a conversation, of course, the president has an obligation to continue it...
...Or is it...
...its articulation of the principle that there are "fundamental moral lines" that cannot be crossed and that "embryonic stem cell research is at the leading edge of a series of moral hazards...
...The president refused to indulge in cheap emotional appeals or glib rhetorical devices...
...And having laid down a moral limitation, the president will have to defend it...
...August 9 marked a new moment in our political history...
...No one would have predicted a few months ago—way back in the twentieth century—that a decision on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research would have been the occasion for the forty-third president's first televised, issue-specific speech...
...If he doesn't, then the concession he has made is bound to be the first of many, and the president will have started our descent toward an appalling commodification and manufacture of human beings...
...As the president put it, with existing stem cell lines, "the life and death decision has already been made...
...After two decades of unregulated in vitro fertilization clinics, with some 100,000 frozen embryos in warehouses, with no legal bar to their disposal, and with very little public agitation from pro-lifers (like ourselves) to do anything about it, it may be a little late to become so fastidious about those embryos, or about funding stem cell lines derived from them...
Vol. 6 • August 2001 • No. 46
