Kuhl’s Anti-Stem Cell Rubberstamping: This Time It’s Personal
My wife and I recently took our son to one of upstate NY’s premier experts on Cerebral Palsy. We talked about his slow, slow progress, whether or not he would ever walk or be able to write, fun stuff like that.
We discussed conventional therapies and treatments, and then I asked, “So what about more cutting-edge stuff, like stem cells for example?”
He frowned and shook his head. “Not in 5 years. 10 years, maybe.”
All the way home I just kept getting angrier. How many years has Bush kow-towed to the religious right, being against stem cell research? How many times has Randy Kuhl voted to support Bush on this? To protect embryos from fertilization clinics that are simply thrown away?
Years of research have been lost. Research that could help my boy’s brain injury. Or people with Parkinson’s. Or the thousands of our brave soldiers coming back from Iraq with Traumatic Brain Injuries. How about that for supporting the troops?
Here’s hoping the next resident of the White House, and the next congressman for NY-29 won’t be so calculating.
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This must be unbelievably maddening. What’s especially infuriating is that there’s no way that someone like Kuhl actually believes in the sanctity of blastocysts.
It really does suck… I know they’re doing a lot with stem cells in England and Italy, but I take it as a personal offense that people like Kuhl and Bush feel free to make live and death (and in this case significant quality of life) decisions from Washington simply to pander to a hard right segment of the population that I believe doesn’t truly get it. Very run on sentence, but you get my point.
Just to set the record straight, I believe that Bush and Kuhl were against public funding, not the research itself.
Just to clarify - I believe that stem cell research was never a violation of the law
You make a valid and critical point in the next upcoming election. This is not only a good reason to vote Democrat across the board, but most importantly to secure the nominations and appointments to the Supreme Court that could further alter and harm such decisions.
If for no other reason, that’s one of the most critical reasons to vote Democrat.
When it comes to conservatives, it takes a personal experience (in general) for them to empathize with a certain situation. You will find conservatives either being mum on a more liberal issue (or actively working against it) until it affects their own family. Democrats/liberals, on the other hand, are not driven by the politics of fear and are more prone to empathy, even when it does not affect them personally.
You can bet if Bush’s twins had cerebral palsy or some developmental disorder or cancer that he’d be singing a much different song.
The head in the sand attitude about scientific research by Bush and his administration is maddening. If only stem cell research could cure selfishness.
Great post.
[...] Kuhl changes the format of his vaulted Town Hall meetings - less interaction per constituent. We are reminded of the stem cell veto, one of the ways Kuhl is superglued to Bush. D&C editorial board even misses the mark on Tax [...]
[...] she does nothing to implement it. Randy’s rubberstamping of Bush’s stem cell policies become personal, btp writes: How many times has Randy Kuhl voted to support Bush on this? To protect embryos from [...]