Say Anything Blog

Interesting...

With astonishment, I read ("Bush beliefs will cost millions of lives," Letters, July 22) about President Bush being responsible for the "death of countless more Americans," presumably for his veto over expanded federal involvement in stem cell research.

Not only is this statement patently wrong, but it also shows that some of your readers do not understand the whole situation. Let me try to remedy this lack of knowledge by the facts as I understand them:

Federal involvement in stem cell research was stopped under President Clinton because of unresolved moral and ethical issues surrounding the stem cell research, like cloning, etc.

In his first televised conference in 2001, President Bush announced federal support of research of 22 sources of human stem cells. In fact, to this day

$90 million in federal funds were spent on this research. What President Bush vetoed the other day was expanding federal money for this research. The original research is continuing. Well, as we all know, when a federal entity starts something, it often ends in either a fiasco or a complete waste of money (the bridge in Alaska to nowhere or Katrina relief being prime examples).

Research on stem cells continues unabashed with private monies or, like in California's example, with state monies. So far some $3 billion has been spent, and by 2010 an estimated

$10 billion will be spent on stem cell research in the U.S. alone. I am happy that California is in the forefront of it.

I think one thing that many people engaged in American politics tend to forget is that on our beautifully crafted system of government there is no need for a one-size-fits-all solution to sticky social issues like abortion, gay marriage or stem cells. Given that our country is made up of 50 sovereign, mostly autonomous states we can theoretically have 50 different solutions to something like stem cells. Or abortion. Or gay marriage.

Our founders recognized that there were few issues that could be solved to a distinct majority's satisfaction from the central government at the federal level, so instead of making the constitution a rule book as to what Americans can and cannot do they laid out in that document a few basic rights that were to be enjoyed by all citizens and then left the power to decided everything else to the various states.

Until the last 50 years or so this has worked well. More recently, however, busybody activists haven't been satisfied with having certain issues decided at the state level. They have sought to force their view on these issues on the country as a whole. In a few instances (see: Roe vs. Wade) they've won by getting judges to read into the Constitution rights and requirements that aren't really there.

That's unfortunate, because I think these issues would be less divisive if the judges and federal politicians would simply recognize the right of the people to decide these issues in their respective states instead of saddling all citizens with a one-size-fits-all solution.