Prez Flies in Face of Logic The other night, while President Bush was reading his prime-time address on stem cell research, an alarmingly large fly kept buzzing around the back of the presidential head. Despite this harassment, the presidential body remained absolutely motionless, garbed in a dark, oversized preacherlike suit. Bush blinked and read, read and blinked, but his body remained frozen, perhaps in terror. Announcing his timid compromise, he looked like some bozo at a church bazaar who sticks his head in a cutout hole while you get three shots at hitting him with a fastball. He paused after every sixth or seventh word, as if afraid of skipping the next line in his script. But as a patriotic American, it was that fly that filled me with anxiety. The fly was huge. A fly on steroids. A fly obviously well-nurtured on the byproducts of the nearby presidential barn in Crawford, Tex. And it was nasty, too, and defiant — a kind of North Korea of flies. What if Bush lost his cool? What if he erupted into spontaneity and splattered the fly across his own brow? That would cause still another worldwide humiliation for those of us who love our country. The videotape would play over and over again on the TV stations operated by our enemies all over the planet. The headlines on Fleet Street would say: SPLAT! French anchormen would break down into tearful laughter. Saddam and Fidel and Kim Jong Il would play the tape at cabinet meetings and award medals to their evil spies in Texas. There he is, folks: The President posing as Solomon, suddenly converted into Moe Howard. Buzzing With Absurdity I whispered a short prayer: "O God, who art on our side, protect this poor man from calamity, for the good of the greatest nation in the history of Thy universe. Make this malignant, atheistic, flag-burning, gun-hating Communist fly buzz off." And, lo! A miracle! My little prayer (along with those of millions of other patriots) was answered. For the fly finally vanished. Possibly wrestled to the floor, out of camera range, by some heroic member of the Secret Service. Bush made his way to the end of his 11-minute address to the American people, the first since he was sworn in last January. And we were left to ponder the content of the Bush oration. Most of it was preposterous. Bush announced that he would allow researchers funded by federal money to go ahead with their investigations, but only under the most severe limits. Yes, they could use stem cell lines already harvested. That is, stem cells extracted from destroyed embryos. There were 60 such lines available, he said, a presidential claim that astonished those scientists who believe that the maximum number in the entire world is about 30. Bush said the existing stem cell lines "have the ability to regenerate themselves, indefinitely, creating ongoing opportunities for research." Some dissenting scientists said they could all be gone in two years. But there were puzzling holes in the presidential logic. Bush clearly believes that human life begins at the moment of conception. But at least 20,000 frozen embryos exist in the U.S. They are embryos left unused during in vitro fertilization — that is, after joining a woman's egg with sperm in a laboratory, before being planted in a womb. All these unused frozen embryos will be destroyed. If they are actually humans, rather than cells that could fit on the head of a pin, doesn't that add up to 20,000 murders? What is the difference between destroying frozen embryos for research that could help living humans, and simply throwing them away? Begged the Question Bush didn't deal with this problem, nor did the anonymous writer or writers who produced an Op-Ed piece under Bush's byline for the Sunday New York Times (the ethics of fraudulent bylines never does get discussed by the country's self-appointed moral leaders). Bush also spoke as if the legal right to abortion does not exist in the nation he serves as President. It does. He could look it up. Every year, about 1.3 million fetuses are removed from wombs in this country through abortion — at much more advanced stages of development than those clusters of cells frozen in labs. Many people — many of them Bush voters — believe such terminations are murder, too. At the same time, Bush, while courting that vague entity, "the Catholic vote," chose to ignore a key component of what Pope John Paul said to him last month at Castel Gandolfo: "A free and virtuous society, which America aspires to be, must reject practices that devalue and violate human life at any stage, from conception to natural death." Lethal injection is not natural death. You must shape a tortured moral argument to insist that strapping a former fetus onto a gurney and killing him shows your high regard for human life. And yet some of the most fervent anti-abortion zealots are also fervent supporters of capital punishment. Including Bush. "There was [sic] a lot of opinions that I needed to hear, including the Pope's," Bush told ABC News on Friday. But he chose to agree only with the part about conception. What About the Money? Bush also avoided a discussion of money. The outlay by the National Institutes of Health on stem cell research is about $250 million a year. This is a lot of money, but insignificant when compared with other federal spending. One example: According to the Pentagon, each test of the missile defense system costs $100 million. So if NIH spending remains the same, we will invest the equivalent of 2 1/2 missile defense tests on research that could cure Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, diabetes, heart diseases, sickle cell anemia and spinal-column injuries. This is not a serious effort. We need a complete, full-scale Manhattan Project-style effort on stem cell research. That is, a broad scientific campaign to explore the use of adult stem cells, those gathered from umbilical cords or placentas, and yes, from frozen embryos destined for destruction. Those who object on moral grounds can vow never to take advantage of the possible cures. Not for themselves. Not for their families. Or various churches could declare those cures to be mortal sins, to be punished in hell for eternity. Meanwhile, the President hasn't heard the end of this debate, even if he is free of that monstrous fly.