Excrement: The Bush Policy on Stem-Cell Research

While you might find my title to be obnoxious, hopefully it will end up being justifiable. In considering Bush's impending veto on the federal funding of stem-cell research, one must first look at the issue from a utilitarian perspective. The embryos that would be used for the research would otherwise be thrown away, destroyed, their potential for life eliminated... Thus, the anti-abortion camp's view that society should value the embryo's "potential" for life, holds no water from this perspective. There is a simple trade-off: should the government let thousands of embryos be thrown into a dumpster or should it financially support research using them to probably save many lives. In terms of utilitarianism, obviously, the latter is preferable. If we seek to maximize life and happiness, then the latter does so more than the former. This is a fact. It is indisputable. Yes, the government will have to pay money for this service, but the sum is trivial compared with the total budget of the federal government, and it may well come out of the general pool already used to support medical research. This is it. The utilitarian back-of-the-envelope analysis of known costs and benefits says that Bush is wrong.

Clearly there's more to the issue however. We may justifiably questioned the intelligence of Bush, as we should of every politician, but he's probably not that idiotic. After exhausting the domain of costs and benefits, morality is the next place to look for justifications. Actually, knowing Bush, we probably should have confronted morality before pragmatism. Anyway, Bush clearly values embryonic "potential" life a great deal. He strongly opposes abortion. While I may disagree with him here, like most moral hogwash, his reasoning is still legitimately defensible. At the very least, it comes down to a judgement call of what constitutes "life." In this case, however, he clearly values potential life more than preexisting life. He would rather see people die of cancer and disease, than see embryos used for research to try to save them. But wait? What happens to these embryos if they're not used for medical research? Well, they're thrown in the dumpster, as I have already said. By extension, this means that embryos are so valuable to Bush, that given that they face certain destruction by one of two means--a useful one for scientific research, or a useless one in a landfill--Bush would rather destroy them in the most unproductive fashion possible: decomposing and turning into dirt and methane... which, by the way, is a powerful greenhouse gas. It is just me, or does this make absolutely no sense? He values them so much that when he has to destroy them, he chooses the less productive option...?

Now, I have presented a rather simple analysis here, and if my reader is my opponent, they are probably going through the roof right now. I have reduced their moral dignity to an offensive contradiction. Truthfully though, I have been simple, and I have been simple because this is a simple issue. But if you're still reading this, you're probably my opponent, and so it would only be polite for me to convince you that this really is simple, by clearing up the major alleged "complications."

Firstly, I haven't really addressed why Bush is being so idiotic. The real reason that Bush opposes stem cell research, in my opinion, is because of God-based opposition to in vitro fertilization. Unfortunately for him, this too is an inane way to justify his position. Since these disputed embryos are the product of in vitro fertilization, and embryos have substantial moral value to Bush, anything that takes advantage of in vitro fertilization, condones it and is immoral, in the ideology of the president. But there is a serious flaw in this line of reasoning. Mainly, there is no line of causality between using the product of IVF and actually supporting it. One can argue equally well (as I have done) that the government's use of these embryos is just a second-best alternative to throwing them away. Just because we use them, doesn't mean we support IVF. It doesn't say anything really.

But more importantly, there is no way in the firey depths of the lowest circles of hell that the government will succeed in banning IVF, therefore trying to have the government oppose it on very shakey moral grounds is absurdity. The government won't ban IVF because it is a socially and medically accepted practice, and it has no real need to go to the trouble. Although, like abortion, embryos are destroyed in a morally disputable manner by IVF, the practice doesn't have the alleged social ramifications that abortion does, which causes that issue to strike a chord with moral conservatives and the religious right. After all, by trying to have children, users of IVF are actually adhering to the Christian social ideal in America, of every couple with two children, a patch of their very own private suburbia, and a two-car garage to boot. Regardless of whether the government should even value embryos as life, entertaining even the principles of such a ban would be pointless because it would not be supported and its justification is still questionable. Does the government have the right to create a menu of criminal laws regulating reproductive health? It isn't clear, no matter what you value.

Secondly, there is this lovely slippery slope argument that people use about how federal funding for stem-cell research would lead to fetus-harvesting for the sake of research. Now, I personally would have little problem with this sort of thing if carried out right, but that is largely based on my highly utilitarian value-scheme. The truth is, no matter what you value, this slippery slope argument fails like virtually every other one in this genre of the debater's bag of tricks. Whether you like it or not, scientists are doing stem-cell research right here and right now. They will continue to do it in this country until the Congress bans it, and it never will. Since this will continue into the foreseeable future, regardless of what our inept politicians do, pressure to engage in fetus-harvesting may happen in either scenario with equal probability. If such pressure do emerge, I admit that federal funding of the research may make them emerge sooner; still, in either case it is not a matter of if, but when. But the same type of scientific progress might not occur if politicians don't fund the research. Furthermore, this worry has never been an issue so far, and in no way do the bills currently in Congress enact such a program. This indicates that the current decision should be made in isolation of concerns with fetus-harvesting. That problem should be dealth with when it becomes a problem. In other words, if fetus-harvesting is going to become an issue, politicians can't stop it from becoming an issue by halting this bill. Therefore, this cannot be a reason to oppose the bills in Congress. If politicians were logical, they would not use this as an argument either for or against federal funding for stem-cell research. Even if you only partially buy this line of reasoning, you still have to weigh this with the potential benefits of stem cell research.

On a final note, some people use this issue to call into question just what type of scientific research the federal government should fund. I can't answer that question. But I can say that if the federal government can justify spending $243.5 million on Fermilab in 1967 for high energy particle research, then surely, SURELY it can justifiably spend a lot less on stem-cell research and still make an enormous impact. Bear in mind that this comes from someone who finds physics to be one of the most joyful things in the world.

I just read on Google news that Bush vetoed the crap out of the Congressional bill.

Sorry to rant for so long, but I became very sad today when I looked at the newspaper and listened to the radio. In Congress, party lines disintegrated, and the various parties argued passionately for both sides. In the end, the bills that won out had fairly strong support from people, not necessarily based on what party or special interest they hailed from, but because of an actual true belief in a proper course of action. I think it may have actually been a truly democratic moment, when people came together, had a debate, and came to a reasonable concensus with a healthy amount of dissent. And what happened? George W. Bush decides to break his long tradition of no vetos on this one issue. Of all the mounds of pork-barrel excreta that are ejected from the bowels of Congress routinely, George W. Bush decided to veto this one bill for reasons that are highly questionable. With this one move, the Republican party has completed its metamorphosis from a party that once-appealled to classical liberals and people of other intellectually defensible beliefs, into the non-denominational political wing of a few fundamentalist Christian groups. And people wonder why the rest of the world thinks that we're insane. It's because our government actually is.