Completely untrue. There was no ban or "block" on clinical trials of any stem cell therapies. In fact dozens of stem cell therapies became available during the Bush years.

Name the therapy that was held up until "now." Of course you can't because it doesn't exist. The clinical trial that was announced in February (of this year) was for a therapy that had been developed over the previous six years using private money.

As the FDA emphasized in the announcement, clinical trials were approved as soon as the researchers demonstrated that they were ready to begin.

Can you provide one example of an institution that was banned from receiving federal funding for performing stem cell research?

George Bush did not impose a ban on stem cell research (of any kind) in the United States. There has never been a ban on stem cell research -- including hESC research in the United States.

In 1998 -- three years before Bush took office -- the Clinton administration prohibited federal funding of hESC research citing the Dickey Amendment as the reason.

In 2001 President Bush lifted the absolute ban on federal funding and implemented a set of rules for the money could be spent, including restrictions on how the stem cells could be obtained.

Please, just stick to the facts on this contentious issue and perhaps we might get to the truth.

I pissed away my teens and early 20s (left school at 16 without finishing 10th grade) and got a job in computer operations in my mid 20s, after trying my hand in the music and photo industries. It was easy then (1975) because so few people were trained or had any aptitude for it.

My employer eventually insisted that I get a high school equivalency and take some programming courses at a community college. I excelled at that and moved on to programming. By 1980 the big money was in COBOL -- yes, COBOL -- programming so I got a diploma from a trade school and moved up to the big bucks.

Over the years I learned IBM PC operations and programming, SQL (bet you didn't think there were SQL programmers in the mid 1980s) online programming (CICS), SGML (Standard Graphic Markup Language) and some networking.

By 1990 I was the "old man" on the floor so nobody trusted me with the cutting edge CASE tool code generators. Eventually I got stuck learning HTML and TCP/IP which none of the hotshots around me wanted to be bothered with.

So there I was, over 40 and useful for nothing more than tinkering with that new internet/world wide web stuff that wasn't going to last while all the young studs around me got to work with the future: Lotus Notes and FoxPro.

You don't want to read the story of my life so I'll cut to the chase. I just turned 58. Late last year I enrolled in a bachelor's degree program. Since I have accumulated some college credit over the years it won't take me forever to graduate. I should have a bachelor's degree by the time I'm ready for early retirement in 2013.

I'm hoping the sheepskin will give my career one last boost to keep me going for another eight or 10 years after that but, really, I did it for myself, not my boss. BTW, I'm just about to take my PMP certification exam. I found that training to be the most useful of my career, despite the fact that I've been a project manager for 20 years.