"If its obvious that were not talking embryos that can -- that under any conceivable scenario would be used for a process that would allow them to be fertilized and become little babies, and I think if its obvious that were not talking about some science fiction cloning of human beings, then I think the American people will support this. I think theyll support it because we want to solve type 1 diabetes. We want to solve -- we want to find out about whether Parkinsons and Alzheimers can be reversed. We want a whole range of other things. And I think at some point, you know -- maybe its -- decades down the way -- if somebody severs an arm and you try to sew it back on, and youre missing some component things, if you can figure out how to fill in the blanks, I think people would like that....[President Obama]has apparently decided to leave to the relevant professional committees the definition of which frozen embryos would not be -- are basically going to be discarded, because theyre not going to be fertilized. I think the American people believe its a pro-life decision to use an embryo thats frozen -- its never going to be fertilized for embryonic stem cell research, especially since now, notwithstanding some promising developments, most of the scientists in this field and the doctors will tell you they dont know of any other source thats as good as embryonic stem cells for all the various things that need to be researched. But those committees need to be really careful to make sure if they dont want a big storm to be stirred up here, that any of the embryos that are used clearly have been placed beyond the pale of being fertilized before their use. There are plenty -- there are a large number of embryos that we know are never going to be fertilized, where the people who are in control of them have made that clear. That --the research ought to be confined to those, and I think the committees will surely do that."

Thus spake the forty-second president of the United States -- a president not famous for malapropismor contempt for science. The words are taken from an interview with CNN's Sanjay Gupta, who introduced the discussion by remarking that President Clintonwas "someone whostudied this." Apparently not.(HT: Ryan Sayre Patricoat First Things)