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 ) It was a no-win situation for him. His core conservative supporters wanted an outright ban, whereas the scientific and humanitarian case for research was damned near overwhelming. It certainly didn't make the case any easier when Nancy Reagan, not exactly a bleeding heart liberal, came out in favor of stem cell research because of its potential use in treating Alzheimer's disease. There's no way that it will yield a treatment in time to help President Reagan, but it was still symbolic of the fact that this is not a pure liberal-versus-conservative argument. I would venture to say that liberal voices spoke nearly unanimously on this in favor of research, but the conservative side of the equation was distinctly fractured. Arch-liberal (heh) Senator Orrin Hatch came out in favor, for instance.Still, the compromise decision really satisfied no-one. (Some say that's the hallmark of a good decision.) But on balance, it's a lot better for the pro-research side than for the anti-research side. I've been cruising my usual straight-news haunts today and was initially surprised by how negative the reaction was from the right on this, given that from my point of view this is more conservative than compassionate. For instance, the Washington Post refers to it as a "break with conservatives." The hierarchy of the Catholic Church didn't like it. Comments from the compassionate side, on the other hand, are surprisingly muted. Actually, the largest clamor has been over Bush's claim that there already existed 60 lines of stem cells, which he considered adequate for research. Consensus seems to be that the number of ones which haven't become corrupted one way or another is actually nearer 30 and may be more like 15, and that this is not enough to provide enough genetic diversity for clinical practice. For instance, here's coverage in the SF Chronicle and Nando Times. And inevitably this decision affected the price of certain corporate stocks. On balance, though this decision didn't give advocates of research everything they wanted, this is a limited victory. It's really no wonder that opponents are upset about it. Research until now has been severely limited by funding. Now funding should rise tenfold beginning next year sometime (the process of issuing grants is slow) and in fairly short order positive results will begin to emerge; this will in turn make it progressively more difficult in future for the opponents to argue against it, and will increasingly marginalize their point of view. This is a decision for now, not a decision forever. We're going to keep visiting it. But this is actually very good for advocates of this research. The biggest worry is the limited number of useful cell lines already in existence, but I don't think that's a problem. There's a difference between the process of researching things and the process of reducing it to clinical practice. The number of cell lines in existence may well be enough to allow research. There's no question that it's not enough for clinical practice, but on that front there's hope. First, the Japanese are going to be continuing to create new cell lines. Second, once this reaches the point of clinical practice, researchers should be able to abandon federal funding and find private funding which doesn't restrict creation of new cell lines. Third, if they reach the point of clinical practice and can demonstrate unambiguously that there isn't enough genetic diversity among the cells being used, that will put tremendous pressure on the US government to relax the restrictions and permit new cell lines to be created from discarded fetuses at fertility clinics. So it's a win for the good guys. Not the win we wanted, but a lot better than it could have been. My most speculative analysis about this relates to why Fearless Leader decided to reveal his decision now, instead of a month ago or a month from now. I think the reason is that he wanted to do it during the Congressional recess. Had he done it while Congress was in session, there would have been speeches and bills introduced and basic grandstanding by everyone on every side. As it is, they won't be returning to Washington for at least three more weeks, and by then the issue won't be quite as much on the front burner. Congress will still have to 
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