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Conservative America: Right and wrong

Barack Obama is dispensing rapidly with his predecessor’s more conservative policies

IF ONE policy sealed the tie between George Bush's administration and conservative religious voters it was his ban on federal funding for human embryonic stem-cell research. On Monday March 9th Barack Obama overturned the controversial policy by signing an order lifting the ban on federal funding introduced in August 2001. The first veto of Mr Bush’s presidency, in July 2006, was used to reject a bill from a Republican-controlled Congress that would have loosened the restrictions. At that time Mr Bush said that harvesting embryonic stem cells crossed a moral boundary that “would support the taking of innocent human life in the hope of finding medical benefits for others”.

Scientists and a few Republicans (Nancy Reagan among them) fought vigorously against the federal-funding ban. The scientists argued that America would lose the edge in biomedical research to Europe; Mrs Reagan compassionately pleaded that stem-cell research could help to find a cure for Alzheimer's disease, which afflicted Ronald Reagan in his later years. ...



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[Source: The Economist: News analysis - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]

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