The Selective Human Harvesting Act of 2005

It's "monstrous" to create a crippled semi-embryonic stem cell that can't ever develop into a human being. I'll go along with that.

But destroying normal human embryos to harvest the stem cells--that's okay.

Yeah.

From Contentious Hearing Focuses on Stem Cells by Rick Weiss:

Central to the newly emerging conservative strategy is an effort to encourage researchers to get the medically promising cells from alternative, albeit unproven, sources instead of from human embryos. Prime among those alternatives are embryos that might not pass muster as "human" because they have been engineered to lack a gene crucial for development into a baby....

Conservatives are not unanimous in their support for the new approach to making stem cells. But supporters say the genetic glitch would be inserted into a single cell before it became an embryo, so the resulting "entity" -- though long-lived enough to generate stem cells -- would face a developmental dead end and would therefore be suitable fodder for research.

Fodder is the right word. 

But some lawmakers expressed skepticism that the technical end run represented an improvement over methods that would be allowed under the pending Senate bill. That legislation, passed by the House with bipartisan support in May, would allow federal funding of research on cells from excess embryos already slated for destruction at fertility clinics.

"When the option is to throw them away or use them [in research], it seems to me a clear-cut choice," Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), subcommittee chairman, said testily. He has expressed his vexation over stem cell research limits with increasing passion since his own cancer diagnosis last year.

Former Appropriations Committee chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) said he agreed with Specter "100 percent," and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), the subcommittee's minority leader, criticized Hurlbut's approach as monstrous...

Vexed you are! Imagine how vexed you would be if you were thrown away! Well here's another clear-cut choice, Sen. Arlen Testily Specter...