Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2001 01:31:59 -0400
From: freematt@coil.com (Matthew Gaylor)
Subject: Stem Cell Speech?
To: freematt@coil.com (Matthew Gaylor)


[Charles Platt is senior writer for WIRED Magazine and an author and 
former science fiction editor when he's not enjoying his "retirement" 
in northern Arizona.  I don't know the answer to Charles' question, 
but perhaps my distinguished readers will?]

Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2001 01:10:52 -0400 (EDT)
From: Charles Platt <cp@panix.com>
To: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com>
Cc: <cp@panix.com>
Subject: stem cell speech

Matt, I am baffled that I have not read, anywhere, a suggestion from
anyone that George Bush has no constitutional right to set science policy.
His speech on stem cell research included a statement that he had decided
to proceed cautiously. How does he have the right to make such a decision?
Will there be an executive order?

This in turn raises the question of how Congress has any right to tell
parents what they may or may not d with their zygotes. Control of federal
funding is one thing; but I sense a desire to go beyond that, and pass
legislation similar to the anti-cloning act which seems destined to become
law.

Where's the constitutional excuse for this? In the tired old Interstate
Commerce Clause?

I am not a lawyer or a constitutional scholar, so I may have missed
something here. But what troubles me the most is that I have seen no
commentators or op/ed writers raising the basic issue of control. Maybe I
just don't read the right news sources--or maybe everyone has become so
accustomed to centralized authority, extending all the way down to our own
genes, the spectacle of a president determining science policy rouses no
surprise.


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