Guess what's missing

The word "adult." That's what. You won't find it in the entire article.

The usual sob story begins the piece. And I'n not just being facitious. It truly is a break-out-and cry story:

Thirteen-year-old Svati Narula is one of the two million Americans with type-1, or juvenile, diabetes, reports The Early Show's Dr. Emily Senay.

"I look like a normal person," Narula said. "I look like I lead a normal life, but people don't realize that it's a lot harder than it looks."

Enter the politics of embryonic stem-cell research. There's two sides, of course: Those brave independent republicans that see the benefit of stem-cell, and those those big-bad coservative right-wingers that want to stop the research that could find "cures."

Should the government expand funding for this research on human embryos?

"The deliberate destruction of unique living self-integrated human persons is not some incidental tangent of embryonic stem cell research, it is the essence of the experiment: kill some in hopes of saving others," House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said.

Despite vocal opposition like that from Delay, a bill that would greatly expand federal funding for embryonic stem cell research recently passed in the House of Representatives with the support from other republicans like Randy Cunningham.

"I am for life and the quality of life but I don't want another six-year-old to die. You cannot look a child in the eye when the only chance they have to live is this."

But opponents like Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) intend to the fight the bill.

"We're putting one set of human lives above another set of human lives, and the reason we do so is because the one set that we're favoring here, that the House passed, can speak and can vote and the others can't," Santorum said.

Surprisingly, they even include the story of a child--who was once on the frozen embryos making the news:

"These lives are not raw material to be exploited but gifts," Mr. Bush said.

To prove his point, the president made his remarks surrounded by Snowflake Babies--babies born from frozen embryos left over from fertility treatments. Under President Bush, the government has funded a program to encourage families to donate these embryos rather than discard them.

And one of them is now two-year-old Noelle Faulk. She was donated as an embryo to her parents, Stuart and Paige Faulk, by another couple who had completed fertility treatment.

"It is absolutely morally wrong, legally wrong, spiritually wrong to use these embryos for anything else," Stuart Faulk said.

The story winds down with the trite heart-felt frustration:

Scientists like Evan Snyder don't want to wait for the federal government. He left the East Coast for California, which passed Proposition 71 last November. The government has pledged $3 billion dollars of state money for research regardless of what happens back in Washington.

"I am a physician, meaning that I take care of real kids with real problems, many of them lethal," said Dr. Evan Snyder. "The impatience is just excruciating."

What's frustrating about this contribution of MSM is that this is one of the fairly balanced pieces! It includes the views of proponants and opponants of embryonic stem-cell research. It describes at least one embryo's journey to childhood. But overall, once again, it makes it clear what a tragedy it is to hold up funds for such important research just because of a moral question. The assumption once again is that moral perspectives are a matter of choice, and one's choice should not interfere with life-saving research.

Even more telling, this report did not mention adult stem-cell research. At All. No mention of the unnecessary debate occuring about embryo harvesting. No mention of the more promising results of adult stem-cell research. Nada.

Why?

It's as though CBS has decided that embryonic stem-cell research is the only kind that matters. Science be damned, there's an issue of freedom on the table. And it sells a lot of air-time!

Pathetic.