"Most Americans favor George W. Bush's limited federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research. But while supporters of less-restricted research are satisfied with their half-loaf, the president's action is overwhelmingly unpopular among stem-cell research opponents.

Overall, 56 percent of Americans favor Bush's decision. Among those who would have preferred broader funding, 79 percent are satisfied with the limited funding he's allowed. But among those who oppose any funding, approval plummets to just 17 percent.

...While Bush's action gets overall majority approval, that's not the same as majority preference. The public fragments on its preferred approach: A third would have preferred broader funding; 30 percent prefer the limited funding Bush is providing; and 26 percent would have preferred no federal funding at all for stem-cell research. "

(Source: "Bush's Decision on Stem-Cell Funding is Unpopular with Research Opponents," ABC News Poll conducted by International Communications Research, August 10-12, 2001, www.icrsurvey.com.)

"Here in this room and in homes across America, we must decide whether we should compel every taxpayer to support destroying human beings at a stage of development through which each one of us passed."

(Source: Joann Davidson, Program Director for Snowflakes Embryo Adoption Program, House Committee Hearing, 17 July 2001, in "Quote of the Week," Human Events, vol. 57, no. 27 [July 23, 2001] p. 1.)

The young children of affluent parents have everything-including a nasty ear infection contracted at the day-care center where their parents drop them off every day.

To be sure, the offspring of the wealthy do enjoy a number of real health advantages over the children of less affluent parents, but in documenting these advantages, a team of Cornell scholars recently stumbled across a health problem reminiscent of the handicaps of rich young people to which playwright Thornton Wilder once referred as "the disadvantages of their advantages." 

Analyzing health and nutritional data collected between 1988 and 1994, the Cornell researchers established-as expected-that "food insufficiency disproportionately affects minority children and children living in single-parent families" and that "low-income children were significantly more likely than high-income children to be reported to be in fair or poor children."  The statistical tests employed by these researchers also yielded an unexpected finding: compared to the children of more affluent parents, "low-income children had fewer colds (in the younger group) and fewer lifetime ear infections." 

In trying to account for this "surprising" result, the authors of the new study suggest that "this disparity in colds and ear infections may be related to increased day-care participation and physician use (causing higher rates of diagnosis) among higher-income children." 

Childhood ear infections can cause long-term hearing loss.  So, when rich parents try to justify their decision to put their children in day-care rather than to care for them at home, their offspring may hear nothing but a meaningless buzz.

(Source: Katherine Alaimo et al.,  "Food Insufficiency, Family Income, and Health in US Preschool and School-Aged Children," American Journal of Public Health 91[2001]: 781-786; emphasis added.)