“Populated with a forest of straw men”
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.
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.
This is not just intellectual laziness. It is the moral arrogance of a man who continuously dismisses his critics as ideological while he is guided exclusively by pragmatism . . .
For what it’s worth, unlike the cro-magnon writing this post, Krauthammer is not a Christian pro-lifer. He’s a non-religious, wheelchair-bound doctor who supports federal funding of embryo-destroying stem cell research. But even for him the moral preening is just too much. Read the whole thing.
Huh, I didn’t know Krauthammer was wheelchair bound. Learn something new… Although now I can’t stop imagining him as Doctor Strangelove.
And if we were going solely by Bush’s stem-cell speech/policy as the only scientific policy that Bush and the Bush Admin chimed in on, Krauthammer’s point might have more resonance. Especially since it spilled over into the McCain/Palin ticket (two notable examples being McCain’s “overhead projector” and Bear DNA comments during the debates and Palin’s “Oh, those French fruit flies, dontcha know!” speech).
Krauthammer was injured in a diving accident while at Harvard. He then went on to get his MD and specialize in psychiatry, and after that he was a member of the Carter administration.
Umm, what does something Palin said have to do with Bush’s stem-cell policy, or Obama’s? One problem with discussing these issues, I find, is that the target keeps moving. It seems it’s impossible to discuss ESCR without zooming into, e.g., fruit-fly research, or whatever the Bush administration supposedly did wrong in other areas.
The fact is, Bush’s ESCR speech was remarkable for its calmness, fairness, and moderation. (I remember it gave me great hope that he would be a good explainer of his administration’s policies; a hope that was dashed a thousand times over in the following years). And the policy itself was a moderate one, acknowledging both the potential and the hazards of ESCR. Research in ESCR has proceeded (a portion funded by the federal government, others by state governments or private industry in the U.S. as well as widely all around the world), as has stem-cell research from adult cells, cord blood, and other non-dstructive means. These latter have, from what I have read, proven more promising so far, and without the moral issues of ESCR. Why pro-ESCR people aren’t more excited about these non-controversial alternative methods is very odd to me. I suspect it’s more reflexive anti-prolife sentiment than anything else.
Anyway, my point is that Krauthammer’s objections seem to me serious enough that they are worth grappling with on their own. His point, in part, is that (as I stated in another comment) that decisions over what things the government should fundare always political in the broad sense, and that Obama’s claims to a greater level of moral seriousness than his predecessor (or, indeed, than each and every one of his predecessors) do not withstand scrutiny.
A footnote: The idea that it is “anti-science” to question federal funding for fruit fly or bear DNA research is silly. I have no idea whether the fruit fly or bear DNA research is a good investment of tax dollars or not. But where you come down in that issue is not a measure of anti-science. There are lots of projects that qualify as “science,” and even lots of very very very good and valuable scientify research projects, that may not be a good use of federal dollars, or at least not the best use at a given time, given other competing priorities. Conservatives may be too quick to say a given project is wasteful; Liberals are certainly too quick to brush aside questioning of any federal expendure as philistine.
This is long enough comment that I am going to post it as it’s own post. If anyone has more comments about Krauthammer’s column, please feel free to continue the conversation in this thread, or in another.
“Sarah Palin ridicules federal funding of fruit-fly research, and the other side says she’s so stupid she doesn’t understand the medical usefulness of fruit-fly research. But she didn’t ridicule fruit-fly research. She ridiculed the federal funding of fruit-fly research, which is indeed not authorized by the Constitution — not even close. Opposing a federal takeover of medical practice and research does not mean you reject the usefulness of medicine.” – Vin Suprynowicz, Nov 2, 20088
http://www.lvrj.com/opinion/33714474.html
Not too bad, but your view is so unique. I like it very much.