Bill Press is a syndicated columnist and the co-host of CNN's Crossfire, which airs Monday-Friday at 7:30 p.m.

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Bill Press: Bush plays a lousy Solomon on stem cells

By Bill Press
Tribune Media Services

WASHINGTON (Tribune Media Services) -- The measure of any president is his ability to make tough decisions. Last week, George W. Bush proved he's not up to the job.

What if President Kennedy had said: We're going to try to land a man on the moon, but only by using rockets we already have? What if President Roosevelt had said: We're going to join the fight against Hitler, but our troops will only be sent to England, and no other country?

We would accuse them of timidity.

History would record that, by setting artificial limits, they had failed to seize the moment and join the ranks of America's great leaders. And so will history judge President Bush.

His decision on stem cells is a joke -- and a sad joke for the millions of Americans, living and yet to be born, whose lives could be saved or improved by medical research. It is also a classic example of what happens when the White House puts politics over public policy.

For, make no mistake about it, this was a political decision.

For weeks, Bush pretended to be agonizing over what decision to make on stem cells. He even went to Rome to consult with the Pope. Baloney. The only thing Bush was agonizing about was how to wiggle out of an ironclad campaign promise without alienating the country's Catholic hierarchy or his party's Christian conservatives.

With that starting point, it was impossible for Bush to do the right thing. His only option was to settle for the least common denominator. In so doing, he judged his own political survival more important than the physical survival of people suffering from Parkinson's, ALS, AIDS, diabetes, Alzheimers and other debilitating diseases.

Like trained seals, the Revs. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, the Republican party's house ministers, immediately hailed Bush's decision as Solomonic. That should have been enough to make anyone suspicious. No doubt, if President Al Gore had made the same decision, the same preachers would have accused him of infanticide. And, besides, as Revs. Falwell and Robertson should know, Solomon's advice on custody -- cutting the baby in two -- was rejected. So should the President's advice on stem cells. Bush's first mistake was buying the extremists' argument that an embryo is a living human being and, therefore, that destroying an embryo by removing a stem cell is tantamount to murder. That is simply absurd. There is a vast difference between the potential for life represented by an embryo in a medical lab dish and the actuality of life represented by an embryo planted in a mother's womb. Outside the womb, there is no life. As conservative Republican Sen. Gordon Smith of Oregon points out, nearly half of all fertilized eggs never implant in the uterine wall -- yet no one ever accuses God of killing those little babies.

To argue that a microscopic cluster of cells -- with no nerves, no nerve cells, and no differentiated cells -- has any rights at all makes as much sense as Monty Python's parody on contraception: "Every sperm is sacred."

But to grant that speck of unformed mini-matter equal rights to a fully-formed person with Parkinson's -- thereby denying him or her the possibility of a cure -- is cruel beyond measure.

Bush's second mistake was to think he could have it both ways: allowing federal funding for research on already existing stem cell lines, while slamming the door on creation of any more. That's as bad as doing nothing at all.

Scientists warn there may not be 60 lines already developed, as Bush suggests. There may be as few as 10; and even 60, they argue, is not enough for research into all known diseases.

Plus, by setting such an arbitrary limit, Bush prevents scientists from engaging in research on cells with the greatest potential for finding cures: human embryos created in the course of in-vitro fertilization which are going to be eventually discarded anyway. Even if not, they'll never grow into a human being. You can leave a divided cell in a petri dish for 100 years -- and, in the end, all you have is what you started with: a divided cell in a petri dish.

Six months into his administration, most Americans were still curious about George Bush.

Who is this guy? Does he stand for anything, or is he just a political opportunist? Now we know.

By placing handcuffs on medical science and refusing to recognize the full promise of stem cell research, Bush proved he's just another politician, trying to have it both ways.