When I was 16 years old, my uncle Louie was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, better known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s Disease. ALS is a neurological disease that causes the myelin sheath coating the body’s nerve cells to deteriorate. Think of this sheath as insulation around an electrical wire; when the myelin goes, the nerve short-circuits and ceases to function. The victim first loses strength in affected areas of the body, then loses control over them altogether. In time, the effect of the disease spreads throughout the body and, as the muscles receive less and less stimulation from the deteriorating nervous system, it begins to atrophy. The victim essentially wastes away.

My uncle, a big, burly, outdoorsy guy who had made his living with his hands fixing Kenworth trucks, shoeing horses, and blacksmithing, weighed just over 90 pounds when he died two years later. His fingers were curled tightly into his palms; he was unable to straighten them. He “ate” cans of Ensure liquid through a tube in his stomach because he could no longer swallow. He could stand and walk only with assistance, and he was fast approaching the point where he couldn’t even do that. He breathed through a tracheotomy tube that needed to cleaned periodically with a vacuum-suction device so he wouldn’t smother on his own phlegm.

I don’t know if embryonic stem-cell research will ever lead to a therapy that could help people like my uncle Lou, or like Mrs. Sorenson, the kindly widow who lived next door to me as I was growing up who died in confusion and terror because her Alzheimer’s Disease had robbed her of her identity, or like Christopher Reeve, my generation’s Superman, who spent the last decade of his life paralyzed from the neck down by a riding accident. But the research is very, very promising, promising enough that people living and suffering with these and countless other ailments are seeing a ray of hope that, for the first time, isn’t just wishful thinking.

Yesterday, Congress did the right thing by passing a bill with bipartisan support to greatly expand stem-cell research in this country. Today, President Bush has done the wrong thing by vetoing said bill, the first time in his six years as president that he will have exercised his veto power. Of all the bills that have crossed his desk, some 1,116 of them according to one source I consulted, this is the only one that he feels must be stopped? This bill, which has the support of some 70 percent of the U.S. citizenry and could potentially cure or at least ease the suffering of millions?

Supposedly the president is concerned about the moral implications of destroying embryos to acquire the stem cells. But this argument is disingenuous, as the embryos in question are coming from fertility clinics that are only going to discard them anyway. Isn’t morality better served by using those embryos for something beneficial rather than simply dropping them into the dumpster? My answer is an unequivocal “yes.”

I’ve tried to avoid political subjects on this blog in recent months because, after all the turmoil of the ’04 election, I simply haven’t had the stomach for the fight. But this issue strikes home for me. And I’m pissed. I’m not surprised, but I’m pissed. Especially as I can’t help but see the president’s position as an exercise in calculated cynicism, a heartless gesture intended to please the Christian evangelicals that form the core of his base. Why do I think this is cynicism on the president’s part? Because if he really had the courage of his convictions, he’d be trying to stop stem-cell research altogether, rather than merely cutting off federal funding. He’d be pushing to shut down fertility clinics altogether, to prevent the destruction of those embryos that he calls “innocent human life.” But he’s not doing those things, because he knows (or has been advised) that this would be going too far. He knows that the majority of American citizens support both ventures. Either that, or he simply hasn’t thought enough about the issue to see the hypocrisy of his “compromise” position.

As I see it, his position is no compromise at all, and it isn’t particularly moral either. It isn’t even effective, because it’s not stopping the research he supposedly finds so repugnant, it’s merely slowing down American efforts while allowing other countries that aren’t hobbled by our damnably intractable pro-life/pro-choice debate to surge ahead. The cures and therapies derived from stem cells will still make it to market, and will still be used by those who need them; it’s just that we’ll be buying them from the Koreans or the British instead of developing them ourselves.

What a cruel, bullshit joke. I only hope that supporters of this bill manage to sway four more votes to override the veto. Not likely, but I can hope. Just as I can hope that there will come a day when no one else will have to die the miserable, ignominious way my uncle went out.