From CBS News's Ryan Corsaro:
Was Joe Biden referring to Sarah Palin, a mother of a child with Down syndrome, when he made this comment?
"I hear all this talk about how the Republicans are going to work in dealing with parents who have both the joy, because there's joy to it as well, the joy and the difficulty of raising a child who has a developmental disability, who were born with a birth defect. Well guess what folks? If you care about it, why don't you support stem cell research?"
The McCain campaign responds to Biden's shot at Palin with this statement:
"Barack Obama's running mate sunk to a new low today launching an offensive debate over who cares more about special needs children. Playing politics with this issue is disturbing and indicative of a desperate campaign." -- Ben Porritt, McCain-Palin Spokesman
Biden's not-so-subtle accusation that Palin doesn't really care about her child is contemptible. But if he wants a clean fight on the stem-cell issue--leaving Palin's family out of this--doesn't he need to answer why he wants to destroy human embryos when that's no longer necessary? As Ryan T. Anderson wrote in THE WEEKLY STANDARD last December:
The stem cell wars are over. Leading scientists are telling us that they can pursue the most promising stem cell research without using--much less killing--human embryos. This breakthrough enables researchers to create human embryonic stem cells directly from adult cells. In fact, the new method may actually prove superior to embryo-destructive alternatives. This is the biggest stem cell advance since James Thomson became the first scientist to isolate embryonic stem cells, less than a decade ago.
Does Biden want to continue subsidizing research that kills human embryos just for the sake of a talking-point?
Update: Yuval Levin parses Biden's remarks here.
