Hope Goes Out Like a Light in the House of Reps

So the House of Representatives yesterday did not muster enough votes to override the presidential veto on the stem cell research legislation, effectively killing the bill just as dead as the blastocytes now slated to be simply medical waste. They came up fifty-one votes short on the vote. Please find out how your representative voted, and either thank him/her for voting to override, or let him/her know that you will work to remove him/her from office and elect someone who will truly represent the will of the voters.

ThinkProgress has a great series of posts on this whole issue here, with a lot of backstory, including the possibility that it was Karl Rove's version of scientific reality that influenced Dubya's veto (color me hugely surprised by this news). Dub himself refused to meet with stem cell research specialists, in the same fashion that he refuses to learn from actual scientists anything about global climate change. Scroll down through the posts until your blood comes to a fulltilt boogie boil. Then if you haven't yet contacted your House rep, you'll be in the right mood to do so.

A legislator from Rhode Island, one Jim Langevin, confined to a wheelchair since a gun accident at the age of 16, had a lot of eloquent and emotional things to say in the House of Representatives yesterday, as he urged a vote to override the veto.

"This veto does not stop embryonic stem cell research, but it certainly slows it down at time when government-supported research in other countries is excelling," said Langevin. "This research will now continue in the private sector with insufficient funding and a lack of government oversight, all while millions of people wait for cures to devastating diseases. Their hopes have been dimmed by the President's action today."

The "lack of government oversight" is an important consideration in a field where need and greed could potentially cause ethics to become murky, the bill that did get signed - the bill forbidding so-called "foetal farming" - notwithstanding. Conducting this research under the spotlight of federal oversight seems like a pretty good idea, other options considered.

But, back to Langevin - you can read his entire press release here, LANGEVIN OUTRAGED BY PRESIDENTIAL STEM CELL VETO, or watch a short video of his speech in the House here. I guess you don't normally hear too much about representatives from RI, unless you live there, but I am glad to know this guy is in that nest of vipers, the House of Representatives.

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