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Stem Cell Research Moves Forward In The US
maniacdavid writes "President George Bush has finally made a clear and final decision on stem cell research. He will allow the existing 60 cell lines to continue their development in the hopes of curing a disease. He said the choice was difficult because of his stand on against stem cell funding during his campaign. But he allowed the 60 to continue because the choice between life and death was already made. This is good for both sides and many people are pleased. " Granted, there's the issue of these 60 lines viability, but at least it's not a total federal funding ban, as was widely expected. As well, there's increased funding on stem cells obtained from adults, umbilical cords, placentas and animals - 250$US million this year, which is still a pittance when you consider the potentials of stem cells.
At least, that's what some of the media says. I, however, take a slightly more grounded view.
Personally, I support this decision strongly - regardless of my personal views on the subject (of which I'm sure you're just dying to hear, right? Hello?)
It's in the President's best interest to appeal to as many groups as possible... after all, he does want to get re-elected (we assume).
I think this decision appeals to the largest possible group of Americans... including those who don't necessarily support it. The absolute conservatives will (and have) denounce this as a moral travesty, while the pro-research groups will lament the limited viability of the exisiting stem cell lines (claimed to be anywhere from 10 to 80, depending on who you ask).
What some people are forgetting is that no laws have been passed restricting the research - all that has been done is that FEDERAL funds have been restricted to a subset of the research. Private organizations are welcome to fund any type of research they want.
The pro-research groups need to realize that they're getting funding for a controversial line of research, and are welcome to do whatever research they'd like with private funds.
The pro-life groups need to realize that regardless of their feelings on the method of obtaining the existing stem cell lines, they *do* exist - abandoning them will not repair the moral injustice they feel has been done. The new guidlines on federal funding acts to represent their views by not supporting the destruction of human embryos (or "pre-embryos").
Frankly, I think Mr. Bush has dodged a major bullet here. Important research will continue with the federal government's assistance, and major moral questions will remain at least partially unchallenged.
-- "Other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?"
Kind of odd that there's such a brouhaha about this, given that most of the real progress wth stem cells has not featured fetal tissue in any form. But the placenta/umbilical cord issue does seem to have been addressed by this, which is nice. I like the idea of that former waste product being put to something useful.
Honorary Member of Jackie Chan's Kung Fu Process Servers
My question is, why do the non supporters feel this is a win? The government didn't stop these companies from getting NEW STEM CELLS, they just stopped the funding on that spcific process.
The researchj WILL go on and i'm happy to say i support it 100%. With 2 grandparents that have alzheimers (and died..) and my wifes father dying a horribly painfull death from cancer i can only have praise for such research.
And lastly, my beliefs is that 4-5 cells do not constitue life, if that is the beginnings of life then sue me for masturbating away billions of cells that would HAVE or COULD have brought "life".
And for the religious right wingers who's life is in gods hands, i hope you don't ruin it for people who believe in god but believe in humans and science as well.
If on the other hand, you believe they aren't life, then not experimenting on the other surplus embryos that will be discarded anyway is a poor decision because it holds back the progress of science in curing some terrible diseases and afflictions.
It appears Bush avoided an ideological decision and opted for the political decision that made everyone a bit happy with some reservations. This should have been an all or nothing decision.
A coworker pointed out that if there shouldn't be a moral objection to using discarded fetuses. The moral objection, if one exists, must be with the people who allowed the fetuses to be created in the first place. Once that step is taken, then using the discarded fetuses for research is at least more noble than flushing them down the toilet.
One very interesting result of Bush's announcement is that we are beginning to see the same change in him as a President that we have seen in our last two (Clinton and the other Bush). GWB came into office on a very conservative platform and immediately began implementing conservative policies and reversing many Clinton policies. Public reaction to these actions was mixed, but I think generally unfavorable. GWB's foreign policy has received a huge amount of criticism both at home and abroad. But now we are seeing Bush being forced to shift more to the center. He won't ban federal funding for stem cell research outright. He won't unilaterally proceed on a lot of the foreign policy or military intiatives that he has lately been pursuing. I think as his administration moves forward, we are going to see more movement to the center. I believe that no president can expect to be successful in today's political climate without becoming a conciliator of vastly different viewpoints. The notion that either conservatives or liberals run this country at any one time lives on only as a fiction convenient for reelection and media purposes.
You don't have to believe in a soul at all to believe that human life has a great deal of value. You don't see atheists running around calling for a repeal of the laws against killing adults, do you?
Although strangely, many of us did try to get the law to allow the killing of fetuses, and were sucessful with Roe vs. Wade. I'm an atheist, and I can't figure out why most of my fellow atheists harbor so much contempt for that particular stage of human development.
"Fetus" is just one among many stages in the development of a human being: fetus, infant, toddler, child, teen, young adult, middle-aged adult, senior citizen. All of these stages ought to be equally valued; they all deserve equal protection under the law against those who would do them harm. Why arbitrarily single out one of those stages, "fetus," and say it is less valuable than the others?
"Fetuses can't live on their own outside the womb," I've heard some say. Well the same is true of most five-year-old children -- they would perish if an adult didn't provide them with food and shelter. Does that mean it's OK to kill five-year-old children?
"Fetuses have very little cognitive development," I've heard others say. Well a one-month-old infant also has very little cognitive development, compared with an adult. Does that mean it's OK to kill one-month-old infants?
Nope, there's no argument that stands up to reason and logic. It's just ghastly that an otherwise civilized society allows members in the first stage of development to literally be dismembered when it would inconvenience one of the members in a later stage of development.
Do what you believe right, as long as you do not prevent others from doing the same.
if this is truely your beliefe I don't see why stem cell research is the issue.
why don't you spend your time and energy on stoping the fertility clinics creating this surpluss of (proto)human tissue.
I am not calling for violence but when was the last time you heard of some cracked out religious zelot bombing a fertility clinic. if you beleave that allowing these fetusis to die is so wrong why aren't you busy making a bigger stink about there petri dish creation that will statisticly end in death.
don't spend your time trying to stop people from using byproducts of a (for the most part) politicly and socialy accepted practice. spend the time on the cause, not the symptom.
I want to make it clear though that I am against Bush's plan. I don't think 60 is diversification enough and I beleave that this is amoral NOT to conduct such research.
Mike Rupert
I listened to the speech, and I thought he made a very wise, reasoned decision. Unfortunately, what I heard on talk radio was that he 'waffled'. 'He didn't make a decision at all,' the commentator spouted.
The sad thing about politics is that sometimes exactly half of the people are for one side and exactly half are for the other. There is no way to please both sides completely. I thought this decision did the job of giving both sides what they claimed they wanted (research on the one side vs. not killing babies on the other).
You can say he waffled. You can say he is an idiot. You can say whatever you want, but in the end I'm proud to call this man President. He to the time to carefully consider the argument from both sides are reached a decision that should make everyone happy.
Of course, this is the real world, and for a lot of people (especially the blowhards who dominate the media) it's not about getting what they claim they want. It's about being in control. The previously mentioned commentator would only be happy if Bush had denied all funding for research, and would then claim Bush was a weeny if the President didn't send his own personal bodygaurds out to hunt down rogue scientist who would dare try to cure Parkinson's disease (which my father has, and I dread). A lot of the 'scientist' (ie, liberal blowhards) would only be happy if Bush came out and said that he is putting up a billion federal dollars to start cell farms, then would get upset if he balked over spending more money to harvest near-term babies from underprivileged women for body parts. You won't hear either of these parties expressing thankfullness that everyone got what they needed, even if they didn't get what they wanted.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
I thought this decision was very surprising, I expected an all out ban. I thought he was taking his time because he wanted to present the appearance of actually considering it, but he actually did.
I realize many people will still be pissed with this decision and spew a ton of vitriol towards Mr. Bush, but you have to recognize that this was a huge comprimise on his part.
After Bush spoke with the pope(who Bush recognizes as actually meaning something... I sure don't) and the pope told him not to allow any funding for stem-cell research I thought that was going to be final.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
I'm not going to argue whether Bush's decision was right or wrong, but what struck me as unusual during the speech was his decision to let the research continue on stem cells whose embryos were already dead. This smacks of "washing his hands" of the one aspect he thinks is wrong- the destruction of embryos (aka potential human life).
Again, I'm not judging the right or left wings here, but his justification could be a bad precedent. During WWII, German and Japanese "doctors" were known to have performed horrible experiments on Jews and POWs (and others). Maybe I'm confusing this with an X-files episode, but wasn't it decided not to use the results of any those experiments, no matter how beneficial, since the experiments themselves were totally unjustifiable?
If Bush is against abortion, embryo destructions, etc. isn't his decision to use these stem cell lines hypocritical? Fruit from a poison tree (or however that saying goes)?
-tim
Why Bush's popularity is increasing. With all the criticism of his intelligence he certainly makes reasonable decisions... I don't care if it is him or the people he surrounds himself with.
Brian Macy
Well then, I believe it is ok to kill adults. Please do not stop me because you don't agree.
At some point we all impose our beliefs on someone. Thats what government is, a collection of ideals and beliefs from a collective group. That group may be large (democracy) or small (aristorcracy, communism, etc..).
JOhn
Campaign for Liberty
> That means you'd have to try approximately 40,000
> combonations every second
How about hunderds of qintillions of combinations every second? That's more like chemicals in the wild on a planetary scale.
On a universal scale, it would be even more grand. There's good evidence that life may have started on another planet and jump, planet to planet, star to star, over millions of years as single-celled life, or simpler, gets knocked off in large-scale collisions. That need not be the case though. Only one planet need get it "right", and we might be that planet. Even your 40,000 combinations per second PER PLANET, multiplied by the universe by fifteen billion years adds up quickly.
But that's beside the point. You have to be very careful when presuming that every single combination is equally likely chemically, or that sub-combinations might be reproduceable in ways that we haven't predicted. Life might have started out as a chemical that catalyzed copies of itself. It's well known that the cell as we know it is most likely an evolved combination of other cells that happened to find symbiosis or parasitism (initially) as beneficial. The mitochondria, with their own DNA, were most likely captured cells that learned to live in another cell. The nucleus itself might have been a separate cell, so to other structures. Even the necessity of such a complex cell wall might be a thousand times greater than what was originally needed, if anything was needed at all. (The technical definition of a cell as membrane containing stuff is nice for a biology textbook, but doesn't have any bearing on a group of reproducing chemicals.) The current cells you see are the polished product of billions of years of evolution before multicellular colonies started.
And as for Bible quotes, you'll have to prove the Bible before I'd accept it as authority. Even if it is authority, my questioning of the wisdom of Yahweh creating male and female still stands. He knew what He was doing. He knew they would stray. Therefore, the universe is just one bizarre, pointless experiment by God.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
Oh, and as to your "Then why have we never witnessed inter-species evolution". Well, lets see what you call a species. Breeding-independant? How about ones just in recent yeras. We've seen that happen with research fruit-fly strains within the past 50 years. Fireweed strains in about 15. Check out TalkOrigins.org for about 40 or 50 more that have been directly observed just in our lifetimes, let alone in recent fossil history.
Again, you show a poor grasp of the concept of evolution. A species doesn't just change. Its traits slowly change, and in the absense of interbreeding between certain groups, branches. A bonobo doesn't just suddenly lose all its hair and start making swords (though, to be fair to them, they do make flint knives on occasion). Over the course of several hundred thousand to several million years, their traits change slightly. For example, donkeys are about 1-2 million years apart from horses and zebras. It took 2 million years to have such little changes as coat color and some facial features. Smaller species evolve more rapidly - fruit flies being one of the most common breeding species for such studies, are an easy example. In our lives, we've seen even smaller species, such as bacteria, change almost beyond recognition.
-= rei =-
*Kid Rock runs for Senate* Democrats: We must run Kid Scissors.
The Senate, in particular Sen. Daschle and the other Democrats, has already made it clear this morning that they will attempt to overturn what is from their point of view a ban. This article in the Washington Post is a fairly liberal take on the decision, and includes some comments by Daschle.
On the other hand, outright permission from the President would have resulted in an equally vicious attack from the Republican-led House of Representatives and conservatives. This article in the Washington Times is a good example of the typical mix of conservative responses.
At least the limited approach the President chose has a chance of standing up against the legislature. Regardless of your personal feelings about the politics or morality of the situation, I believe the President's decision was a fairly balanced approach to an extremely difficult issue.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
- There already exist some samples of embryonic stem cells from embryos that have been previously harvested.
- Those embryos were harvested by privately-funded researchers (I think).
- Federal funding will go only to researchers working with existing samples.
- Privately-funded researchers will still be free to harvest more embryos.
- Embryos harvested in the future will have the same status as those which have already been harvested today.
- Thus, there's no reason why government-funded researchers couldn't do research on as many new samples as private researchers care to provide. Even if there's not as much private money, it can't cost all that much to cut up some embryos.
If I was against stem-cell research, I'd be pretty pissed at this point.By the way, can anyone confirm the "60 samples" number? One of the guys giving commentary on NPR said it was more like 6.
My deviantArt site
It is my understanding that when drug research is partially federally funded, the drug companies doing the research still get patents on their creations. Thus, they can enter a new drug into the market without any short term hope of competition and make tons of mony off of tax payers -- the same tax payers that footed part of the bill for the research! (Again, this is what I've read elsewhere, but may be wrong.)
So, who owns those stem cells? I think its great that there are 60 stem cell ines available, but how available are they? Will you have to buy a license to use some? And after you buy that license, will you be prevented from culturing them yourself to create your own supply or be forced to license more? Will the owners of these lines take a cutt of whatever you find with them?
I think Dubya looked awfully concerned about the whole thing. I just wonder what changes his mind. And while the whole things seems to be a happy medium, what are the missing details?