Backfire

The President's veto of federal funding for embryonic stem cell research did nothing but increase funding for the same research at the state level:

Two governors have seized the political moment to up their ante for stem cell research: Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, a Republican who helped Bush win a second term but has long disagreed with him on stem cell research, cited the veto as he lent $150 million from the state's general fund for grants to stem cell scientists. At the same time, Governor Rod Blagojevich of Illinois, a Democrat opposed to most every White House initiative, offered $5 million for similar grants in that state.

Together, the twin moves dwarf the $72 million five states had allocated for the research as well as the $90 million the National Institutes of Health had provided since 2001 for work on a restricted number of stem cell lines.

Several other governors, including at least one Republican, Jodi Rell of Connecticut, raced to denounce the president's first veto in a sign of the political potency of the stem-cell debate [...]

The California and Illinois initiatives continue the patchwork pattern of public funding for stem-cell research since Bush announced his policy restricting how federal money could be used in the arena in 2001.

More than 100 bills have been considered over the past two years by dozens of state legislatures, with one, South Dakota, banning such research altogether, and five - California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland and New Jersey - allocating state resources to the effort. Others, like Wisconsin, Virginia, Massachusetts and Indiana, have taken steps to support stem-cell science without directly funding research, while Arizona, North Carolina and Virginia have formed groups to study their state's role in the emerging field.

...and it's led the rest of the world to seize the opportunity:

The European Union agreed Monday to finance human stem cell research, bypassing fierce opposition from a group of predominantly Roman Catholic countries that argued that the bloc risked paying for research that was both immoral and unethical.

The funding will only be available under strict conditions, including a ban on research aimed at human cloning for reproductive purposes and on research intended to modify the genetic heritage of humans. The funding will come from the EU's research budget of €51 billion, or $64 billion, for 2007 to 2013.

Opposition to the bloc's proposal to fund stem cell research was overcome after Janez Potocnik, the EU's research commissioner, assured science ministers from the EU's 25 member states that under no circumstances would the EU fund research that involved destroying human embryos for the procurement of stem cells.

Instead, he said the EU would fund research using embryos that would otherwise be discarded - for example, from in vitro fertilization centers.

"We will not pay for the destruction of embryos with EU money," Potocnik told reporters, adding that countries that do not allow stem cell research would not be required to do so now.

The IVF discarded embryos are exactly the ones for which Bush specifically denied funding in his veto.

So instead of getting on the side of science and ensuring US leadership, the President allowed the rest of the world to reap the eventual financial benefits (China and Singapore are already well ahead of us on this), caused a major fight in the states on a bad issue for extremist Republicans, and arguably allowed more testing nationwide and worldwide in a process he called "murder."

I guess we shouldn't worry about his vetoing other bad legislation, since by all accounts everything he does has the opposite effect. Tell you what, Mr. Bush, please ban health insurance for all Americans. Maybe we'll get it then.

P.S. Tom Harkin assailed the decision as the work of a "moral Ayatollah" last week. It's a good read.