Obama Proposes a Toast

Wednesday, 11 March 2009
By William Saunders

In 1942, C. S. Lewis published The Screwtape Letters, advice from a senior “tempter” to a novice about how to confuse us poor mortals, which may be summed up in a single sentence: “Your job is to fuddle them, not to encourage them to think.”

In 1959, Screwtape appears again, in an essay titled, “Screwtape Proposes a Toast,” in which the senior tempter reflects on the state of the world and on what can be done to make it even worse. Those who listened to President Obama’s Oval Office address on March 9 lifting President Bush’s restrictions on stem cell research may be pardoned for thinking the old tempter has returned.

Under Bush, restrictions were placed on federal funding of research using stem cells derived from human embryos after August 10, 2001, the date on which he imposed the ban. But that was all – it was a ban on federal funding of research using those lines. It was not a ban on that research as such, which could still be conducted in any state (e.g., California) which did not ban it, and which could be conducted with state government or private funds. Nor was it a ban on research using pre-August 10 lines (though many of us felt it should have been), or on scientific research using other sources, such as adult stem cells, which pose no ethical concerns. the rest