but, Cuomo continued, Bush's position "…remains a minority view" (Hurlbut, 822).
Christine Todd Whitman, who served Bush as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency in Bush's first term (she served from January 2001 to May 2003), and was the first female governor of New Jersey, supported embryonic stem cell research. Whitman noted in her book that right after Bush was re-elected in 2004, Christian conservative organizer Phil Burress was heard to say, "The president rode our coattails" (Whitman, 2006).
Whitman believes the support of the Christian conservatives (i.e., evangelicals and others) for Bush was exaggerated; to wit, just twenty million of the fifty-nine million who voted for Bush indicated "moral values as their most important issues" -- which is just a third of the Bush victory vote.
Author Gary Scott Smith examines the great lengths the Bush campaign went to in 2004 to identify Bush as anti-abortion and anti-stem cell research. The campaign built a website to attack Democrat candidate John Kerry (www.kerrywrongforevangelicals.com) and distributed 300,000 copies of a documentary called "George W. Bush: Faith in the white House" directly to churches (Smith, 2006, p. 377). Moreover, the Bush reelection campaign attempted to get its hands on the membership directories of 1,600 churches in "the swing state of Pennsylvania"; this provoked a controversy because it "violated campaign finance and tax laws" that require congregations to remain non-partisan if they truly expect to retain their tax-exempt status.
It became clear by 2004-2005 that a majority of American supported embryonic stem cell research; according to a poll in 2005 "…two-thirds of Americans approved of the research" (Burgin, 2009, p. 4). Hence, a bill to basically overturn Bush's executive order (H.R. 810) began working its way through the House of Representatives with the proviso that the embryos had to have been donated by fertility clinics, that they were created specifically for fertility treatment, and that otherwise the embryos would be discarded if not used. These provisions were built into the bill so it would remove serious potential ethical issues.
The House took a full year of negotiations to come up with a final vote, but on May 24, 2005, the legislation passed the House, 238-194. The breakdown was 187 democrats and 50 Republicans (plus one independent) voting for, 180 Republicans and 14 Democrats voting against. By the time the U.S. Senate began debate on the legislation, a Gallup poll reflected that 61% of respondents believed embryonic stem cell research was "morally acceptable" (Burgin, 4). On July 18, 2006, the Senate approved H.R. 810 by a vote of 63 to 37 (43 Democrats, 19 Republicans voted yes). Very quickly, on July 19, Bush, remembering his important constituency of conservative Christians and evangelicals, vetoed the legislation. There were not enough votes to override the veto, and so important tools for conducting research were not to be made available during the Bush eight-year presence in the White House.
Additional Ethical Approaches to Stem Cell Research
To Philosophy professor Phillip Montague's (Western Washington University), the proposition that individuals who are now full-grown adults "…once existed as embryos from which stem cells could have been removed" is a flawed argument (Montague, 2011, p. 308). That argument implies that in the developmental history "…of every adult human being" there was, at the beginning, "an embryo to which the adult is numerically identical," Montague writes. But "…there is no such numerical identity" and in fact no adult human being "ever existed as an embryo (or any part of an embryo) from which stem cells could have been obtained" (Montague, 308).
Montague finds it interesting that opponents of stem cell research claim that "all human beings once existed as zygotes"; he goes through an esoteric explanation that is difficult for the layperson to understand, but basically he points out that albeit adult human beings can be traced backwards, to childhood and infancy "and well into the prenatal period" (Montague, 318). But to go deeper into the genesis of humans would require investigating the embryonic discs, which comes into existence "early in the third week following fertilization," he explains (318). The embryonic disc is created as a result of the "differentiation on the part of cells from the inner cell mass"; and though the embryonic disc may well form a fetus, and in time an adult human, the same can't be attributed to the inner cell mass, which is nothing but a "cluster of cells" (318).
Scientific evidence through empirical study shows that during mitosis, the zygote fails to survive. Additionally, he asserts that no human ever existed "as an embryo from which stem cells" could practically have been harvested; and given that fully proven aspect of science, there is no reason to suggest that "…these embryos are human beings with the same moral status as adult human...
Stem Cell Research Should Have More Government Funding The topic argument "Stem cell research government funding." For paper, construct argument defending a claim policy. Remember argument based a claim policy, writer seeks solve a problem establish a problem exists, part argument entail claims fact Stem cell research should have more government funding A stem cell can be defined as type of cell that can be found in many body tissues. Stem cells can
At this point it should be clear that there are no good reasons to oppose the federal funding of embryonic stem cell research and only good reasons for supporting. Opposition to the federal funding of embryonic stem cell research can only be justified by an appeal to unreasonable and arbitrary moral standards based not on logic, reason, or concern for human well-being, but rather on the dictates of outdated and
There are some embryos who are outside of this environment, and will not grow to be people, and are therefore suitable to use in stem cell research. There is a degree of moral ambiguity related to the debate of stem cell research -- based on the conception of when life actually begins. The acknowledgement of this aspect of the debate is acknowledged on both sides, and is a point of
In this sense technology turns human life into just another product that can be created in a laboratory and which has no intrinsic or deeper religious value or meaning. As John Paul II stated during a visit to America, "A free and virtuous society, which America aspires to be, must reject practices that devalue and violate human life at any stage from conception until natural death" (Dart, 2001, p.
Stem Cell Differentiation The need to restore the lives of the individuals calls for more of transplantation than that which is available. There are fewer organs, which can help in the transplantation process, which means that overdependence on the process makes it to be reliable. Further, the process may also end up endangering the life of the donator. Transplantation is the only available process that can for the individuals having kidney
The media might present an issue as fact without verifying its truth via the appropriate channels, while the public in turn is eager to accept as fact what is presented to them, as this is much more simple than researching the issues themselves, or even simply verifying the truth of a stated fact. Furthermore, the authors hold that simply educating the public regarding issues of scientific controversy is far
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