ESC’s are not your own cells, selfharvested adult stem cells are. IN other words, the maximum potential of ESCs still leaves you not ‘cured’ but ‘patched up’. There’s a whole lot more to it than that, but it’s really the crux of the issue.

I am an embryonic stem cell advocate and I am not the least bit angry that we have had some medical success with adult stem cells. I am angry that the enemies of embryonic stem cells exagerrate the medical efficacy of adult stem cells and insist we should do one or the other. Forty years of research with one type of cell bearing fruit is just not an argument against doing research with a newly discovered cell type.

For a libertarian/classical liberal, or simply anyone who believes in limited government, it would seem that your first and third reasons are reason enough to think that Bush did the right thing for the wrong reason in vetoing the stem cell funding bill.

As for the second, I am content to leave that issue to medicine to decide. Although I don’t have the same ethical concerns that Michael Fumento does.

Fumento sounds like a cheap hack with his Ken Lay cracks. His direct comparison of ESC to ASC suffers either from ignorance of the chronological and financial research disparities, or from base dishonesty. I’ll refrain from picking between the two and simply dismiss his comments. He’s wrong.

I have no problem at all with your argument that the US government should not be funding stem cell research of any kind. Such funding is clearly beyond the scope of what libertarians see as a legitimate function of government. I also have no problem with the argument that Bush’s veto is at odds with positions he has taken in the past. His moral arguments are muddled on this issue (at best). But the second of your arguments does not have legs.