President Bush's priorities are inexplicable. The man best positioned to foster good works and forestall bad things has chosen instead to focus on blocking medical research that could someday bring relief to suffering people. It is as baffling as it is regrettable.
Last week, the president vetoed a bill that would have eased restrictions on federal funding for stem-cell research. He did so, he said, out of concern for the sanctity of human life.
White House spokesman Tony Snow said, "The president does not believe it's appropriate to put an end to human life for research purposes."
The problem is that the embryos the president is determined to protect will never become anything remotely recognizable as human, while the people who could benefit from stem-cell research are quite real — as is their suffering. It is impossible not to think that the president puts a higher value on the fate of what are, theoretically, potential humans than on the lives of living, breathing Americans.
In fact, Bush attaches such importance to preventing embryonic research that he has twice vetoed stem-cell bills. And that is from a president who has employed the veto only three times in more than six years in office.
The president's only other veto was of a spending bill that would have imposed timelines for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, which can be argued from both military and political standpoints. The stem-cell veto, however, does not fit anything but the narrowest interpretation.
Bush is constitutionally barred from running for re-election, so currying favor with his base seems not to apply. Nor is there a practical outcome to be sought.
Defining human life as beginning with fertilization is an important position for abortion opponents. But even in that context, defining embryos stored in laboratories as human life is a reach.
It certainly has no meaning for the future of the embryos. They are the byproducts of in-vitro fertilization efforts. And, while it is theoretically possible that they could be implanted in a woman's uterus and carried to term, the fact is they have already been deemed leftovers and will be discarded. Why is it permissible to throw them away, but an affront to the dignity of human life to use them to help sick people?
The only humans at risk in all of this are those who might someday benefit from stem-cell research. Whatever the moral status of the embryos, the humanity of those people should not be obscured by a largely hypothetical argument apparently rooted in the politics of abortion.
There is a lot of optimism invested in stem-cell research, but no one really knows what will come of it. There is no guarantee that it will lead to a cure, prevention or treatment for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, spinal cord injuries, diabetes or any of the other ailments to which such research might apply.
But there is realistic hope that it might. There is serious scientific opinion to the effect that embryonic stem-cell research could advance human understanding of a number of diseases and help reduce the suffering they cause. And sometimes hope is the best we have to offer.
Choosing between defending an abstract definition of life and a chance to help demonstrably real human beings should not be difficult. President Bush, however, got it wrong. Again.
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The Durango Herald is a daily newspaper based in Durango, Colo.
