The backward veto

President Bush's veto of an effort to expand federally funded embryonic stem-cell research shows once again how far he is willing to go to appease religious conservatives and set our country backward.

Once again, private religious beliefs drive public policy. The rest of the world is proceeding with embryonic stem-cell research because the possibilities for helping millions of people suffering from diseases ranging from Alzheimer's to diabetes to Parkinson's are too promising to sit still.

Of all the things to take a strong stand on, Bush's first veto in five years shows how out of touch he is with the needs and hopes of millions of Americans.

The stem cells involved would come from frozen embryos stored at fertility clinics. The majority of them await disposal because couples who produced them no longer want them.

Bush is out of sync even with the U.S. Congress. Both chambers support lifting funding restrictions on embryonic stem cells, but there were not sufficient votes to override the veto. Bush's backward thinking remains the law.

This one issue alone is worth voting in Democrats — or at least senators and representatives unwilling to follow this 21st-century Luddite.

In our state, representatives voted along party lines — Democratic Congressmen Jay Inslee, Rick Larsen, Brian Baird, Norm Dicks and Jim McDermott voted to extend research while Republicans Cathy McMorris and Doc Hastings voted not to.

The notable exception was U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert, the Auburn Republican who has shown a willingness to buck his party. Good for him. It would be more courageous, however, to take such a stand if the House vote had been close, which it wasn't. Most likely, he got a pass from leadership because of his looming tough re-election fight.

As Mark Emmert, president of the University of Washington, said, "The future of biomedical research on a number of challenging and pernicious diseases lies in the ability of biomedical researchers to conduct the kind of fundamental basic research that can only be accomplished working with expanded lines of embryonic stems cells and supported by federal research funds."