Guilty of Helping People

The overwhelming popularity of funding stem cell research and the promise of curing previously incurable diseases has forced the Republicans to flip-flop

Urged anew by Nancy Reagan, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist on Thursday revived a bill to expand funding for embryonic stem cell research after conservatives who had blocked it withdrew their objections.

"It's my intention now that we've gotten over this first hurdle that we will (vote on the bill) in the not too distant future," Frist said as he brought the three-bill package to the floor.

"We'll do this before we get out of here for the October break?" asked Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

"We will," replied Frist, R-Tenn.

The bill passed the House a year go, but Dr. Frist diagnosed it as dead on arrival to the Senate, presumably because he didn't want to upset his fundie benefactors in his run for the White House in 2008. The wingnuts simply don't value the progress of science over the life of a blastulae. The Vatican's even talking about excommunication, if you can believe that:

Scientists who engage in stem cell research using human embryos should be subject to excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church, according to a senior Vatican official.

Cardinal Alfonso López Trujillo, who heads the group that proposes family-related policy for the church, said in an interview with the Catholic weekly Famiglia Cristiana published Thursday that stem cell researchers should be punished in the same way as women who have abortions and doctors who perform them.

"Destroying an embryo is equivalent to abortion," said the cardinal. "Excommunication is valid for the women, the doctors and researchers who destroy embryos."

This is not some run-of-the-mill Vatican official, either, it's the Pope's top advisor on these issues. How a stem cell enbryo is a member of any family baffles me. This is a life-saving technique that has as its only goal eradicating diseases that have threatened the species for centuries. It's immoral not to allow science to move forward.

Of course, these are the guys that imprisoned Galileo.

If the Senate is actually going to seriously move stem cell legislation through, good. We're already falling behind the rest of the world in this field because we're not funding it at the federal level. Of course, with this Rubber Stamp Republican Congress, I'll believe it when I see it.

UPDATE: Think Progress has the details on how the stem cell issue is greatly affecting the Missouri Senate race.