The President has dug himself in for a battle over embryonic stem cell research. The problem is that he is dug himself into a hole that makes no ethical sense. He is in favor of research on stem cell lines that already exist but not on frozen embryos that already exist. He allows destruction of embryos for IVF but not for research. And he talks about adoption when that is manifestly not an option for most frozen embryos which are put aside often because they don’t look right.
He is a man of principle but his principles are simply incoherent. – Art Caplan