Stem-Cell Reversal

President Obama has now reversed Bush's restriction on federal funding for stem cell research that would result in the destruction of embryos. Obama is entitled to do that. However, he went a step further by claiming that this was a sign that his Administration would not "politicize science." Translation: if you believe that there are moral boundaries for scientific inquiry, then you are basing your decisions on ideology instead of science. Interestingly enough, everybody, including President Obama, believes in moral boundaries for research. Somehow I doubt that Obama is in favor of certain forms of animal testing, for instance. Here is an excerpt from a piece from the Wall Street Journal today:

"The claim about taking politics out of science is in the deepest sense antidemocratic. The question of whether to destroy human embryos for research purposes is not fundamentally a scientific question; it is a moral and civic question about the proper uses, ambitions and limits of science. It is a question about how we will treat members of the human family at the very dawn of life; about our willingness to seek alternative paths to medical progress that respect human dignity."