Morally Unserious
Krauthammer sure can nail it at times. h/t Scott Johnson. It is important that you realize that Krauthammer's personal position on this is more like Obama's than like Bush's (OK, maybe halfway between).Restoring? The implication, of course, is that while Obama is guided solely by science, Bush was driven by dogma, ideology and politics.
What an outrage. George Bush's nationally televised stem cell speech was the most morally serious address on medical ethics ever given by an American president. It was so scrupulous in presenting the best case for both his view and the contrary view that until the last few minutes, the listener had no idea where Bush would come out.
Whereas, this go-round:
Obama's address was morally unserious in the extreme. It was populated, as his didactic discourses always are, with a forest of straw men. Such as his admonition that we must resist the "false choice between sound science and moral values." Yet, exactly 2 minutes and 12 seconds later he went on to declare that he would never open the door to the "use of cloning for human reproduction."
Does he not think that a cloned human would be of extraordinary scientific interest? And yet he banned it.
Is he so obtuse not to see that he had just made a choice of ethics over science? Yet, unlike President Bush, who painstakingly explained the balance of ethical and scientific goods he was trying to achieve, Obama did not even pretend to make the case why some practices are morally permissible and others not.
Is he that obtuse? I am coming to think he is very unreflective about almost anything about his own identity. He just assumes what he believes is right.
It is the moral arrogance of a man who continuously dismisses his critics as ideological while he is guided exclusively by pragmatism (in economics, social policy, foreign policy) and science in medical ethics.
Science has everything to say about what is possible. Science has nothing to say about what is permissible. Obama's pretense that he will "restore science to its rightful place" and make science, not ideology, dispositive in moral debates is yet more rhetorical sleight of hand -- this time to abdicate decision-making and color his own ideological preferences as authentically "scientific."
Dr. James Thomson, the discoverer of embryonic stem cells, said "if human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough." Obama clearly has not.
Maybe we only have to suffer this for four more years. But I am not sanguine about what the option will be when it comes up.
UPDATE: Someone is even more annoyed, not just by the lack of moral analysis, but by utter lies.
That, of course, is where George W. Bush's "ban" came into play. Bush was actually the first President to make federal funding available for embryonic stem cell research. What he did, however, was limit the funding to the currently available stem cell "lines." That is to say, there were pre-existing stem cells from previously destroyed embryos, and federal money could fund research on those, but federal funds could not be used on any more lines, thus preventing taxpayers for paying for embryo destruction. Bush's policy was opposed by those on the left who wanted no restrictions on federal funding, and by those on the right who wanted no federal funding for any embryonic stem cell research. But it was a serious and defensible policy.
Reasonable people can differ on the level of protection that those embryos warrant, but it is not debatable that it is an early stage human being which is destroyed to extract those cells. The President is, as usual, condescending and dismissive to those that disagree with him. At the signing ceremony, President Obama** said, "In recent years, when it comes to stem cell research, rather than furthering discovery, our government has forced what I believe is a false choice between sound science and moral values. In this case, I believe the two are not inconsistent."
Well, they are if one of your moral values is not destroying human embryos in medical experiments.
posted by Alan Adamson @ 8:29 PM
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