- $3/gallon gas - Oil Company Record Profits - Exxon-Mobil
- Axis of Evil, Iraq, Iran, South Korea - Diplomacy or Bombs
- World Image of US - All time low
- Corruption in the White House - Libby & Rove & CIA Leaks
- Education - Dipping to lowest levels
- Supreme Court Appointments - Slanting right
- Corporate Corruption - Tyco/Enron/WorldCom
- Medicaid - Prescription benefits fiasco
- Insiders & Lobbyist - Corruption uncovered
- Record Federal deficits - Bankrupting our nation
- Sanctity of Marriage? - Divorce rate over 50%
- Stem Cell researchers - Proposed jail terms
- Illegal Immigration & No Border Control - Shameful!!!
Is President Bush letting America down? Has he alienated everyone except his extreme right wing conservative religious base with polls showing only a 30% approval rating?
Republicans have always stood for less taxes and smaller government, a concept that most Republicans, libertarians, and Moderates agree on. Since he has increased the national debt, even his Republican base is eroding away. If he doesn't make drastic changes soon...The impeachment drums will be beating after the fall mid-term elections.....
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Copied from the Andrew Tobias web site.....
http://www.andrewtobias.com/cgi-local/display_col.pl?060203
George Bush - State of the Union - 2006
Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research human cloning in all its forms creating or implanting embryos for experiments creating animal-human hybrids and buying, selling or patenting human embryos. Human life is a gift from our Creator, and that life should never be discarded, devalued, or put up for sale.
Bernie Siegel: Translated, that means the White House supports the Brownback Bill, named after the Kansas senator, which calls for criminalization of SCNT, a form of stem cell research that would create patient-matched stem cell lines. That bill is an assault on public health. If a researcher makes a stem cell line using this technique, he would be subject to 10 years in prison and a $1 million fine. If YOU arrange to send your sick nephew overseas to get an injection of these stem cells for treatment of diabetes or other medical condition, YOU would be subject to the same penalty.
The creating of embryos, to which the President refers, is taking a patients single body cell (we have 100 trillion cells in our bodies) and placing it inside a donated human egg with its nucleus removed. While in the Petri dish, the microscopic embryo is subjected to an electrical current and is transformed from a body cell into an embryonic stem cell that can then differentiate into any type of tissue in the human body, matching the donor's own genetic make-up. No sperm involved, no pregnancy, only treatments and cures.
Could the potential cure for all diseases be banned in the United States? The President has his pen in hand waiting to sign the ban into law.
Prohibiting the creation animal-human hybrids could be interpreted as preventing the placement human cells in mice or other animals needed to make treatments safe for human beings. My Uncle Oscar walks around with a pig valve in his chest. Should we ban this, too?
Telling us we can't discard embryos is tantamount to saying 400,000 frozen embryos, surplus from InVitroFertilization treatments, should remain in cold storage forever. The fact is that they will be eventually discarded or disintegrate. If donated to medical science, those cells in a dish would not go to waste.
Bush's exaltation of the embryo is really a veiled threat to regulate IVF medicine out of existence and drive such infertility treatments off-shore, a situation which has already occurred in Italy.
At least Bush was honest about his motives. Unlike most foes of embryonic stem cell research who resort to false alternative arguments, misrepresenting the potential of adult stem cell research (something every legitimate scientist knows not to be a reason to delay research on embryonic cells), the President invokes the views of the Creator to justify his position. Of course, it is HIS view of the Creator's intent.
But I remember the words of Nina Brown, a stem cell activist from Houston battling Parkinson's, who has another view. She told a meeting of stem cell activists last June, I believe God has given us this window of opportunity before cells begin to differentiate, as His gift to sustain life and relieve human suffering.
A father, whose daughter has diabetes, wrote the President: These fertilized eggs do not have a brain, or a spine, or a heart...they do not have a soul or a conscience...they do not feel pain... they are not human beings, but rather potential human beings. But they will never realize their potential, because they will be discarded. It is heart wrenching to think that rather than discarding these embryos who will never reach their potential, our government will not fund research that would possibly help my child reach her potential. For she does have a brain, and a soul, and a heart...and does feel pain.
Where time is measured in human suffering and death, the politicians holding back funding for embryonic stem cell research and demonizing other potentially life-saving research should be held morally responsible.
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Our country is being punished with mediocre leadership (let's face it, when President Bush is speaking, everyone holds their breath, waiting for him to put his foot in his mouth). On the other hand, the Democrats have failed to express alternate solutions and new ideas. With Democratic leaders like Hillary, Al Gore, Al Sharpton, Harry Reid, John Kerry, and Howard Dean leading the party...I don't have much hope for 2008
