Stay classy Sen. Biden

Ironically I was about to write a post on how embryonic stem-cell research being pretty much a non-issue this election cycle. In the last presidential cycle and the last congressional cycle ESCR was brought all the time among Democrats. This issue was used a lot to try to show those that opposed ESCR as being really mean and of course Sen. John Edwards had said ‘the work we will do when John Kerry is president — people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk. Get up out of that wheelchair and walk again..’ With continuous breakthroughs with adult stem-cell research and no progress on the ESCR front there has been less and less media advocacy on this issue. Some scientists have even abandoned trying to use human cloning as a source for ESCR and have moved on to adult stem-cell research. Politically I have heard very little about ESCR in the last year or two and you got to bet that some voters suckered into funding state research are having second thoughts. So this was pretty much the state of things until today.

"I hear all this talk about how the Republicans are going to work in dealing with parents who have both the joy, because there’s joy to it as well, the joy and the difficulty of raising a child who has a developmental disability, who were born with a birth defect. Well guess what folks? If you care about it, why don’t you support stem cell research?"

Now the context of what he is saying is in relation to embryonic stem-cell research since there is pretty much no one on the face of the Earth against adult stem-cell research. This was always the trick of the media before to talk about stem-cell research generically and Sen. Biden does the same. First off just how crass is this in bringing up her child for political purposes? Democrats have been charging her with using her child for political purposes when that charge can be laid squarely on their shoulders. Earlier today someone from the Democratic Underground put up Sarah Palin’s baby Trig on eBay selling it as a prop. The number of "retard" jokes now told by Democrats in relation to her baby are quite despicable.

But moving on from Biden’s lack of class let me answer the question for him. Because she doesn’t believed in killing an innocent person in order to benfit another. Though the reality is that even if their was a breakthrough in ESCR it would have n effect. Francis Beckwith mentioned that commentator ["george"] at the Commentary Mag blog said "it is absolutely impossible to treat trisomy 21 with stem cells. EVERY cell in the baby’s body has an extra chromosome 21. One would have to physically replace every cell in the baby’s body to see an effect. Not only is Biden a boor, he is a scientific illiterate. Just what we need in charge."

The real question is why do you Sen. Joe "life begins at conception" Biden believe in ESCR? This doesn’t fit you narrative about not wanting to criminalize abortion and the excuses you have used to justify your abortion votes (except partial birth abortion). Sen Biden the other day said that Sarah Palin would be a step back for women. Why is it that you want research that involves hazarding the life of women in order to get eggs for use in research? That some women will have to deal with the severe effects of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome with the drugs used to extract eggs. To paraphrase the charge often leveled at pro-lifers "why don’t you care about the health of women?"

Is it any wonder he skipped the installation Mass of his new bishop where Bishop Malooly said:

We will continue to stress the constant teaching of the Church that each person must respect every life from conception to natural death. And we will continue to seek the intercession of Saint Thomas More for Statesmen, Politicians, Supreme Court Justices, Judges and Lawyers–that they may be courageous and effective in defending and promoting the sanctity of human life, the foundation of every human right, the foundation of our love for the poor.

Joe Biden is certainly no Thomas More. "I am personally opposed to the King setting himself up as the head of the Church in England, but because of differing views in a pluralistic society I will sign the parliamentary Act of Succession."

To her credit Gov. Palin is against ESCR in all forms. I wish I could say the same about Sen. McCain. His view on ESCR is that he "opposes the intentional creation of human embryos for research purposes." This though is still the dominant type of research being used for those doing ESCR so it pretty much means that he supports ESCR research using so-called leftover embryos from ESCR. This though is still intrinsically evil. Though this is not currently an avenue of research that is being used much. It is difficult for scientists to get access to these frozen human beings and they need to be donated from the parents. Plus the reason they prefer cloning is that there are tissue match problems involved. I don’t think Sen. McCain understands this very well – maybe he has been taking science lessons from Sen. Biden.

Sometimes I think that Sen. Biden was picked to be like a gaffe lightning rod for Sen. Obama. That Biden would take most of the heat and Obama’s multiple gaffes could be covered up by the gaffe emitting cloud of Sen. Biden.