CNN Gives a Laugh

It's always nice when the news can make you laugh. This morning it was a story about Bush's threatened veto of the Senate's stem cell funding bill. There was a brief interview with a wheelchair-bound gentleman named Steve Johnson who, along with his wife, adopted an embryo and brought it to term. The girl was 3 or 4 and running around in the background as he spoke. His comments were funny and disturbing at the same time. He said:

I could potentially benefit from the embryonic stem cell research but that means, you know, essentially killing my daughter.

Let's be clear here - this guy is full of shit. Embryonic stem cell research is not essentially about killing his daughter or any other three year-olds. Johnson's bullshit was followed by, amongst other things, Rick Santorum blurting out "It's human, it's alive". No, a blastocyst is not human being. These conglomerations of cells that are invisible to the naked eye are from humans just as skin cells are. However, a couple dozen cells with the potential to grow into a person do not a human make.