Frist: Please Start Making Sense

I'm leaving for an excursion to the Outer Banks, so blogging will be lighter and I don't have time to do anything justice this morning. But I couldn't leave without commenting on Bush Set to Use First Veto on Stem Cell Bill by Michael Abramowitz and Chuck (Chuck?) Babington. Naturally it includes virtually nothing about adult and other non-embryonic stem cell work, other than an unintentionally amusing line about another bill that would "encourage research into creating stem cell lines without destroying human embryos. Gee, I sure hope that works out. Mainly, however, I want to ask what the heck majority leader Sen. Frist, in backing the bill to permit frozen embyros to be destroyed for their stem-cell lines, thinks he is doing:

Frist, a heart-transplant surgeon, said he believes human life begins at conception, but he defended medical advances that might derive from embryos that are "100 percent" certain to be destroyed and have no hope of being adopted.

"We have learned that fewer than the anticipated number of cell lines have proved suitable for research," Frist said in a floor speech, "and I feel that the limit on cell lines available for federally funded research is too restrictive."

But you cannot really believe what you say you believe, senator. If you believed that human life begins at conception, you'd be doing everything you can to block this bill, which is merely a variation on the theme of destroying one life for the benefit of another. And there's no embryo 100 percent certain of being destroyed until it's, you know, destroyed.

Good man. Means well. Fact-challenged. Non-president.