So we knew this was coming and now it has happened. Thankfully President Bush is remaining faithful to his position against further funding for this research and vows to veto the bill again:

S.5 is very similar to legislation I vetoed last year. This bill crosses a moral line that I and many others find troubling. If it advances all the way through Congress to my desk, I will veto it.

I didn’t watch any of the debate on the Senate floor this week, luckily Family Research Council has been paying close attention and has issued a couple of press releases separating fact from fiction regarding some of the claims being made by the bill’s supporters. It appears that the main offenders were Senators Harkin, Specter, Durbin and Dorgan. The first deception they highlight is always my favorite. Supporters of ESC research always think they can get by with claiming to have “ethical guidelines” for destroying human life for scientific research – it’s not possible.

DECEPTION: Senator Harkin claims that S. 5 has tighter ethical guidelines than the Bush embryonic stem cell policy.
TRUTH: Apparently, Senator Harkin thinks using taxpayers’ money to encourage the destruction of human life is more ethical than not destroying human embryos. President Bush’s policy does not allow funding for research that destroys human embryos, nor create an incentive to do so. S. 5 is written precisely to do so at taxpayer expense.

Then we have the ever popular “these embryos are going to be destroyed anyway” rationale:

DECEPTION: Senator Specter claims that the 400,000 frozen embryos available for research will be thrown out. He says they won’t be used to produce life.
TRUTH: According to Rand, of the 400,000 frozen embryos, only 2.8% are designated for research, and Rand estimates that if all these embryos were used, they could only generate 275 new stem cell lines at most. S. 5 will not generate as many embryonic stem cell lines as proponents claim. Researchers will have to create human embryos for the sole purpose of destructive research, or attempt to clone human embryos for research.

Regardless of whether an embryo is facing certain death or not, it is beneath the dignity of the human person to be used as an object of experimentation. Human embryos deserve the same respect owed to every other person.

There were other claims of Bush imposing his moral views and cries of not enough stem cell lines available. But what was most interesting was that apparently both Sen. Harkin and Sen. Dorgan used juvenile diabetes as an example of a disease that could potentially be treated with ESC research. Meanwhile the Journal of the American Medical Association just published a study about human patients with Type I diabetes who were very successfully treated with their own stem cells. Perfect timing, huh?

Bottom line, we’re already funding ESC research, and we’re giving quite enough. Keep in mind this final deception:

DECEPTION Senator Durbin said that Bush “closed down federal funding” for human embryonic stem cell research.
TRUTH: President Bush is the first to use federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research. Last year, NIH spent about $40 million on human embryonic stem cell research.

JAMA study

Family Research Council PRs:
FRC Condemns Deception By Senators Specter and Harkin On Stem Cell Research
Senators Dorgan and Durbin Mislead on Stem Cell Research