Gil,

But, I think it's a valid point that Bush has urged discrimination against a particular promising line of research because of the religious symbolism involved. That's a bad thing.

1. Governments have, do, and will continue in the future to discriminate against the FUNDING of lines of research. (In fact, they *have* to. Capital is finite. To fund project X necessarily discriminates against the funding of project Y.) I don't know how they "discriminate against research" per se outside of the context of funding, unless you're talking about banning, which is not actually what Bush did and which your alarmism notwithstanding I don't think anyone seriously believes to be in the cards.

2. "Promising" is your, highly informed I assume, opinion. May be correct. However,

3. whether something is "promising" in and of itself is not very interesting. Even modulo subjectivity, lots of things are promising. It would only be informative as a *relative* statement (see 1, we *must* discriminate), as in, It's *relatively* promising compared to other things. That may be how you meant it, and indeed, that it may be, but,

4. Make sure you understand what you are calling "promising". Again, what Bush has *actually* declined to fund is research-using-fetal-stem-cells-from-other-than-lines-XYZW..., not "Stem Cell Research" in general. Are you *really* saying that fetal-stem-cell-research-from-other-than-those-existing-lines, is promising, and *relatively* so? Why are fetal cells in particular so necessary? Why are other lines so necessary? What's so bad about the existing lines? Have you done the leg work here?

5. Although Bush's religion was undoubtedly involved in his decision (as it is in virtually *all* his decisions I presume), unclear why you use the phrase "religious symbolism" to denote this decision. Religious *principles* perhaps, and understandably if one doesn't believe in any religion than all such principles may seem like mere "symbolism" or incomprehensible as anything other than that, but... Why don't I just go ahead and accuse you of engaging in Scientific Symbolism? Basis for the charge would be the same.

It's hard to tell, but this could have a chilling effect on privately-funded research because there would be fewer researchers who could follow-up on interesting results, and some might fear an eventual legal ban (as with cloning), etc.

But on the other side of the ledger we have The World's implicit declaration that this particular research (=research using fetal-stem-cells-from-other-than-existing-lines), if only funded at a higher level, would definitely cure Alzheimer's or some disease like that, and all that is really lacking is money. Your more sober hedging here is duly noted; however, assuming The World is correct, why wouldn't some enterprising funding agent/European government/researcher jump at the chance to grab that sure thing? ;-)

Again, apparently an Alzheimer's (or disease like it) cure is out there right now just for the taking, all that is needed is for enough money to be paid to a scientist to manipulate fetal stem-cells from lines other than the crappy useless pathetic ones that are US government approved. If it's such a sure thing then who cares if the US government, being overrun by religious fanatics, puts a (temporary, as it would surely be, since a cure is almost here!) "chilling effect" on future research or even bans it. All the more reason for Euro-gov'ts or George Soros (or hey what about the Chinese?) to fund this research aggressively, quickly pluck that low-hanging disease-cure off the tree, get famous/win Nobel Prizes/distribute the cure around the world, make big profits, and say a big "In Your Face!" to the stupid Americans who would be shown the error of their ways in the most dramatic way possible since Sputnik.

P.S. I know this is all mostly just an irritating tangent and perhaps I should have just let stand the sloppy use of "would" because the important thing is to allow all stem cell research unfettered in the interest of progressiveness and all that is good and nice. However, IMHO equally irritating was the fact that The World's first post about the death of Ronald Reagan was to use it as a flimsy springboard into a virtual non sequitur about Bush's mid 2001 stem cell research decision.

Does the life and death of Ronald Reagan have nothing more pressing to teach us than the need for the U.S. federal government to issue research grants to scientists who want to work with fetal stem cells other than the existing lines already in use?

--Blixa (last one too)