The Daily Background

For the first time in several days, I’m not leading off with the situation in the Middle East. Instead, I’m going to say a few words about an issue which is very personally important to me.

Stem Cells
The Senate has passed a resolution which would allow more stem cell research to take place in the United States, which has quickly fallen behind other places in the world since the President last brought the topic up– way back in 2001. The Senate bill, which was supported by many moderate and realist Republicans (despite the possibility of hurting their re-election efforts amongst their conservative base who think that cells are human beings), easily passed 63-37 yesterday (you can find out how your Senator voted here).

This is, however, not enough to surpass the veto-wall that the President is almost certainly going to impose. His first veto as President in the six years that he has been in the White House will be cast to restrict science and medicine that would help millions of Americans. One of them was my grandfather who passed away earlier this year after a very difficult battle with Parkinson’s disease, one of the several illnesses which scientists are confident could be treated with the help of stem cells.

Millions of Americans are afflicted with medical problems that could be treated with stem cells, and millions more have relatives and friends who are in the same situation. But with the President holding doctors’ and scientists’ hands behind their backs, they continue to suffer and die premature deaths– because he endorses the entirely religion-grounded and unscientific belief that that cells are human beings.

Public opinion is squarely against this uneducated belief that cells constitute human beings, and the President, and it seems, 37 Senators do not care. Naturally they will say some bullshit about not being governed by public opinion, but this is a casual dismissal of a fundamental truth of representative democracy: you’re supposed to represent the will of the people. That’s your entire fucking job, assholes.

Americans don’t elect people with the idea in mind that they’ll enforce their own beliefs; we elect leaders to fucking represent us. People like Rick Santorum are not helping the ill people of their states who have multiple sclerosis, or are quadriplegics, or have Parkinson’s, when they vote against medicine, against treating Americans, against saving lives.

And they do this all in the name of saving other lives. Because they think that cells (such as those found on umbilical cords that are discarded every day) are human beings. Pardon my French, but how utterly fucking ridiculous is that argument? “We’re not going to treat real, living breathing human beings, our own constituents no less, because we’d rather protect the ‘potential life’ of a cell on an umbilical cord that is going to be thrown in the trash anyways.”

Meanwhile, places like Korea and Mexico are leading the way in this scientific field. The day that American scientists start moving to Mexico so that they can develop medicine because their government wants to protect the rights of a cell on a fucking discarded umbilical cord lying in a bio-trashcan in the delivery ward of the Rush University Medical Center, because our leaders, the people who we elect to represent us thinks he’s doing God’s work– is one hell of a sad day. A vote against stem cells is a vote against not only science and medicine, but also your 12 year old constituent who has multiple sclerosis.

A vote against stem cell research is a vote against an American who is paralyzed from the neck down. It’s a vote against Americans with Lou Gehrig’s disease. It’s a vote against Americans with Alzheimer’s disease. A vote against stem cell research is a vote against Americans with Parkinson’s disease. A vote against stem cell research is a vote against my late grandfather, and by extension a vote against me, my entire family, and all Americans who have had, ever have had, or will have, any of the multitude of chronic illnesses that scientists in other parts of the world are working to treat. A vote against stem cell research is, in a very real sense, a vote against America.

Now there are some people who will point out that the next President will probably reverse President Bush’s archaic stance on stem cells, but the truth is that we should have been allowing American scientists to fully work alongside their European and Asian counterparts for five years now.

The Post’s Dan Froomkin also has some thoughts on the impending anti-medicine veto the President is about to cast.

Bits and Pieces
Ned Lamont’s Senate campaign has released three new ads, and they’re offering them in three formats: Quicktime, Windows Media, and YouTube. Sweet, guys.

President Bush personally stepped in to prevent due process from taking place in an ethics investigation related to the NSA’s illegal domestic spying program. Yeah, cause ethics are a threat to national security.

The anti-equality House Republicans failed to get enough votes for their anti-American marriage amendment yesterday, even though the Senate had already rejected it and it was therefore useless to even try. Democrats were quick to point out that if the anti-equality amendment/election year stunt had succeeded, it would have been the first time that the U.S. Constitution would be amended to actually take rights away from Americans.

This was a clever talking point, but I’d like to hear more questions like The Daily Show’s Ed Helms once asked an anti-gay marriage activist; “How has your marriage, your own personal relationship with your wife– gotten worse because gay people have equal rights in Massachusetts?” Not an exact quote but you get the idea. Either get Republican House Majority Leader John Boehner to come out and tell us that he doesn’t have sex with his wife anymore because he can’t stop worrying about gay people, or stop using that ridiculous “defending” marriage bullshit.

And finally…
I’ll have a special Middle East briefing later in the day.

Filed under: Z-TDB Blog