I guess Bush hates people and enjoys watching them suffer needlessly.  Isn’t that why he vetoed the stem cell bill?  He said it was because the “bill would support the taking of innocent human life…”  Perhaps he forgot about Iraq.  Killing the bill under that premise seems particularly hypocritical.

To use such drivel to claim that his veto was an act to preserve human life is as insulting as it is repulsive.  Apparently, a dozen or so cells are more important than those already walking and talking and in desperate need of new treatments and cures.

Bush did not save any human lives whatsoever despite what he said.  What he did was relegate those blastocysts to destruction anyway.  Only now, it will be a waste of their potentional.

The bill Congress passed authorized funding for research on those clusters of 12-15 pre-embryonic cells.  They are already frozen in storage at fertility clinics.  At present, when patients no longer seek fertility treatment, all related blastocysts in storage are destroyed and discarded.  The proposed policy change would have engaged those stem cells for research as long as the patient authorized such use.  Instead, now they’ll be thrown away just as they have been for years.

He saved nothing and no one.  He did kill a whole lot of people and ensure tremendous suffering on a great many others.

That is Bush’s legacy on this issue: condemning millions of people to horrible disease and death simply because he didn’t want the government to pay for the destruction of clumps of cells that were already destined for the garbage.  Not only were they never going to become humans, but his veto ensures they will still be destroyed.  The only difference is that he also ensured their destruction would be empty and senseless.  Tossed in file 13 like a bad love letter…  Literally.

More importantly, science and medicine are being set back decades, and millions more people will fall ill or die from ailments that might well have been successfully treated or cured.

I keep repeating that because it’s the most critical aspect of this issue.

Besides, where did he get the sudden desire to be seen as a respecter of life?  It’s okay to kill people with the death penalty, a senseless and empty act of revenge deceitfully called justice, but it’s not okay to destroy a few cells that will never become a human because they could have been a human had circumstances been different, had they been implanted instead of discarded?  Am I the only one who sees the conflict in this?  Or are we suddenly going to force their implantation so they don’t die anyway?  That’s the only way his decision could make any sense, and even then it would be revolting and preposterous (although not outside the realm of consideration for this tyrannical group).

To add even more humor to it, Bush acted in direct contradiction to the will of the American people.  60% – 70% of Americans support stem cell research.  At least 60% supported the bill passed by Congress.  But in that King George way we all know and love, Dubya made good on being “the decider” by telling us our collective will doesn’t matter so long he’s making the decisions.

To be fair, the preznit may well have another option.  We could, for instance, harvest stem cells from all the dead Iraqis.  It’s obviously okay to kill them or allow them to be killed while under our protection, so perhaps it is equally okay to invest in some purely scientific grave digging (assuming we can’t intercept the cadavers before they’re buried).  I wonder if this might be his plan.  Brilliant!  That George.  He always keeps me on my toes.

Or, and maybe it’s this, he intends to use Iraqi pieces and parts to build new embryos for stem cell research.  Or Lebanese pieces and parts.  Or the poor or the infirmed or the disliked.  Or a minority group that’s being too uppity.

Ooh!  Ooh!  Ooh!  I know what it is!  I know what it is!  [holds hand up, jitters and convulses in seat, and prays the teacher notices and acknowledges]

He’s going to use the pieces and parts from all the people who die from the diseases we really want to treat but can’t because of his own personal religious views, outdated and offensive though they may be.  That way they’re still American pieces and parts.  All we have to do is allow these poor souls to die of natural causes.  They were dying anyway.  We’re just choosing not to try to cure them.  We’ll cull them as the social pariah they are.

Um, wait a minute.  They were dying anyway…  Imagine the cosmic justice in that one.  You’re only killing indirectly, and there’s a big difference between that and experimenting with a few dozen cells that were going to be destroyed anyway.  They were dying anyway…  So why not?  I know adult stem cells don’t hold anything like the promise as these pre-embryonic stem cells, but still…

Kidding aside, it truly does make me sick that he vetoed this bill.  His remarks were empty and insulting given the state of affairs in our country and around the globe.  He showed a complete disregard for the facts of the bill and the blastocysts in question.  He lied, but that’s not so much a surprise as it is a given.  He demonstrated that predictable Christian loathing of science, not to mention its equally predictable ugly sister: ignore science no matter what.  He ignored the will of the people as well as that of the people’s elected representatives.  It’s even more activist than those activist judges he hates so much.

Bah.

Sign the petition urging Congress to override the president’s veto.