Rick Perry, prayer and stem cells Unexpected consequences

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http://www.economist.com/node/21525940

FOR Christian conservatives, the biggest event on the summer calendar came on August 6th. Some 30,000 of the faithful gathered in a stadium in Houston for a prayer rally on behalf of the country. Some fasted, though others ate nachos. They were keen to see Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, who seems to be about to announce that he will run for president. The governor duly preached. “His agenda is not a political agenda—His agenda is a salvation agenda,” he said, of God.

The same could not be said of Mr Perry himself. He will enter the Republican race as a powerful prospect, partly because he is on firm footing with the party’s social conservatives. They might like him even more if they knew an obscure but intriguing fact about him: he actually practises what he preaches.

Mr Perry, a young-looking 61, is a fitness fiend. Last year he made headlines when he shot a coyote while running in the hills west of Austin, Texas’s state capital. But time takes its toll. Last month Mr Perry had an operation to fix a recurring back problem. While the surgeon was at it, he injected the governor with stem cells, in an experimental procedure meant to speed recovery.

Pro-life conservatives oppose embryonic stem-cell research on the grounds that it destroys life. They are keen, however, on adult stem cells, which they hope may obviate the use of the embryonic kind. The stem cells used in Mr Perry’s procedure were his own. And the governor has been a proponent of adult stem-cell research, for economic reasons as well as ethical ones. If such treatments gain federal approval, and become more popular, Texas could be a centre of that industry.