But he distinguished sharply between the use of these cells, which had zero prospect of developing into human life, and embryos that might conceivably serve as way stations to human life.

Last year, when Congress was considering a bill similar to the one he has just vetoed, President Bush held a ceremony at the White House honoring 21 families. The babies brought into the East Room were manifestly alive and healthy. They had been adopted as frozen embryos and implanted in the wombs of their new mothers, who had successfully brought them to term. The president's point was that he would never be instrumental in the use of public funds for research that began by destroying organic material which might conceivably result in such children as were in the White House that day.

There is no law on the books, and Mr. Bush does not seek one, that would make it criminal to kill embryos in order to use their cells experimentally for scientific work. And we know that research that entails the use of embryonic stem cells is going on, not only in foreign medical centers, but here in the United States, notably California. Mr. Bush hasn't asked for a declaration of war against those scientists, but he does ask the public at large to acknowledge that there is a moral line here that requires attention. At some point, never mind the praiseworthiness of the design, scientists need to stay their hands, guided by different criteria from those that Adolf Hitler was guided by.

Critics of the president, in high fury, say numerous things, among them that embryos by the millions are fated to die as a matter of course, so that to single out those that die, so to speak, under the researcher's knife is arbitrary and morally meaningless.

Well, so the argument goes, but we can take whatever satisfaction we wish from the knowledge that there is one Chinese there, whose life has been saved.