Dear President Bush,

I am 31, and I have a paperweight for a pancreas. Seven years ago, on the Wednesday after Labor Day, instead of getting on a plane to teach MATLAB to researchers at the NIH, I went to my doctor who checked my blood glucose and sent me to the hospital. The first day I came to terms with the fact that I have type 1 diabetes — a chronic, life-long condition. Over the next two days as a patient, I learned how to change most things about my life: what to eat, when to eat, how much to eat, what to do when I get sick, how to avoid problems when exercising — all those things I thought I already knew how to do. I also learned how to test my own blood and how to inject insulin. Since then I’ve learned to spot the signs of hypoglycemia (confusion, sweating, spots before my eyes, the feeling that my brain and eys are trying to change places, the need to physically and mentally hold tight to something) and hyperglycemia (nausea, weakness, irritability, depression).

But I paid special attention to the complications. Blindness, amputation, kidney problems, nerve pain, toothdecay, increased risks of heart attack and stroke, and even . . . er . . . E.D. So I try to follow the rules — which are really more like imprecise guidelines — and watch the numbers (HbA1c 4/year and blood glucose 5-8/day). But it’s hard to reach ideal numbers, and even “perfect” control still has deleterious bad effects on overall health as we age.

So from the beginning I’ve held out hope for a cure. I have to; I can’t imagine living decades with this disease. I could get a pancreatic islet cell transplant; but my body can reject these insulin-producing cells, donor organs are in short supply, and the unknown pathogen might eventually destroy these cells, too. Shortly after my diagnosis I read about a promising clinical trial of a potent anti-rejection drug that had great success with islet cells, but there are two few cells to go around.

Stem cell research is my best hope for a plentiful supply of islet cells and for a vaccine against the virus which destroys the insulin producing abilities of islet cells. Without federal funding, the research institutions that work with stem cells face tremendous hurdles. The time to create new therapies may extend beyond my lifespan and the 171 or so million other people worldwide with diabetes, not to mention alzheimers, parkinsons, and other diseases.

I understand the potential for moral queasiness regarding anything that concerns undeveloped life which might become human. But a zygote, a blastocyst, an embryo — these are not human life; they are potential human life, in just the same way that my DNA is potential human life only when all the right conditions are in place. Embryonic stem cells are not life.

Any moral system that places the unliving over the living, the potential for life above actual human life, and the “protection” of the inanimate above the needs of those who actually suffer — well, that sounds like a corrupted or degenerate moral hierarchy. I suspect that either you or your advisors are smart enough to appreciate the actual moral issues here and the needs of those people who require the compassion of the state. And I know you appreciate these issues because you have articulated that it is possible to perform embryonic stem cell research “without sanctioning the practices that violate the dignity of human life” and by allowing embryonic stem cell research using existing lines and by not outlawing research done to create new cell lines with non-federal funds.

So I can reach no other conclusion than this: You are a dick.