Fetal Tissue Controversy

Your editorial rejection of Dr. Healy, nominated by President Bush to head the National Institutes of Health, reveals an ideological rigidity that is far more troubling than the political malleability which you claim she has demonstrated.

Are you serious when you say “We don’t agree” with her reported position that “. . . when moral and ethical concerns of society . . . collide with pursuit of science, a ‘time out’ is sometimes needed”? The controversy over research use of fetal tissue shows how difficult it is, and will be, to make the right decisions about life, given the options offered or promised by science. To remove the moral dimensions, as you apparently suggest, would be a relief all right: a relief from our humanity.

OWEN GILLICK

Twentynine Palms