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Clark Withholds $60 Million Pledge to Stanford
vocaljess writes: "In an op-ed piece in Friday's New York Times (which you have to register to read, blah blah blah), Netscape creator Jim Clark has announced that he will withhold $60 million he had pledged to donate to Stanford University to build a center for biomedical engineering and science. He states "I believe our country risks being thrown into a dark age of medical research. Biologists are at the threshold of the most important set of discoveries in history, and rather than teach and lead, our politicians react and follow a conservative few. This legislative action will cause the United States to miss a revolution in biology.""
So he's pissed at Bush for his descision (or indescision, if you take it that way) on stem cell research and how he see's conservatism effecting biological advances, so he doesn't give money to a college to biolgy research in protets? This doesn't make sense. Maybe if he gave his money to a college in Britain that has much more liberal stances on, well, everything. That might start to get the attention of people and make a statement. But this just seems stupid.
F-bacher
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
Jesus, he's one of us.
Finally, someone who stands up for science instead of politics.
Course, one has to consider he's MAKING politics by doing this. ^_~
BBCNews have covered this,
which also forms part of one of their 'indepth' news anaylsis.
They also have a link to Stanford where their president has issued his responce.
troodon.net
Sciences need more money, not less. Next time he should just hold a press conference and talk about the issue rather than by with-holding money.
I just got back from Europe. I was flabbergasted with how advanced some of the telecommunications technology is. The USA is in the goddamn stone ages as far as cell, PDA, and television is concerned.
Looks like it's about to be the same in biotechnology. And, hell, with the dumb patent shenanigans that are pretty much squelching innovation, it wouldn't surprise me if there are other technologies that are also being held back in the USA. (Automobiles could be one: the Europeans have some stuff that's pretty damn sweet. And some of the public transit is way better than anything in the US...)
Could be a pretty damn fast trip to third-world status.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Driven by ignorance, conservative thinking and fear of the unknown, our political leaders have undertaken to make laws that suppress this type of research.
Ok, so if you are liberal, your thoughts are OK because you are OPEN. But if you are conservative, you're thinking is CLOSED? If you're open to diversity of opinion, then you must accept ALL types of thinking! Bush (not my favorite president to say the least) was struggling with some legitimate moral issues regarding stem cells from aborted fetus. Honestly, I'm sick of people doing things "in the name of science" and calling all moral discussions "ignorant". I don't stand on either side of the stem cell issue, as I have yet to fully understand the moral implications (if any). However, I would say that it's ignorant to scoff those who are attempting to excercise discernment.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
Here's the link to bypass NY Times registration:
C LAR.html
http://archives.nytimes.com/2001/08/31/opinion/31
If more and more people started coming out like this, then prehaps we would start to see some change. It is a very well written letter and brings up some good points. He is absolutely right that the absence of federal $$ could crush this field in the US.
Its sad that this has to happen, but maybe it will send a message to the public. The problem with most of our (in USia) government is that it is more concerned with preserving the status quo, not for helping (or at least not hindering) true inovation and discoveries.
It is my belief that if God had not intended for us to make discoveries via stem cell research (or insert your favorite "That research is against God's will!" here), then He would not have given us the intelligence to do so. I don't think using genetic engineering to create "designer children" is right but I do think that preventing that same research, that could discover cures to diseases, is wrong.
Oh, and here's the article, login free.
The fact that Slashdot posts links to www.nytimes.com instead of archive.nytimes.com?
Or the fact that they always repeat the completely redundant "registration is required blah blah blah." Guess what? We know this already. And if you don't know it, you'll find out as soon as you click on the fucking link!
And what exactly is the point of not using the archive.nytimes.com link? It's not like you're doing NYTimes a favor, since one of the firsts +5 posts is ALWAYS someone giving the direct link to archive.nytimes.com!
Give us a frigging break!
HERE WE GO AGAIN!
"And like that
"Netscape creator"... dude probably doesn't have $60, let alone $60 million. This gives a nice out for him.
He is saying biotechnology is the next big thing. He is gonna donate this money, then get federal funding for the research and then patent everything that comes from it and make billions of dollars.
I personally like the ol G Dubya's stand. The big compainies only want the federal funding for research so they don't have to spend the money, yet they still get the patents.
If all these big companies think its sooooo important to have more than these 60 stem cells why don't they fork over the money for the research? Last I saw these companies weren't hurting for money, yet they had plenty of patents.
What in the world has this got to do with biomedical research? It is you who seems the imature linux bashing 14 year old.
When the government cuts funding, the private sector inevitably picks up the slack for anything worthwhile. That's how capitalism works.
So, if Clark's temper tantrum is representative of the private sector, stem cell research must not be all that worthwhile...
What really chaps my hide about this whole debate is that both sides seem to be deliberately ignoring the the fact that human embryos are not the only source of human stem cells. Proponents of stem cell research instist that only embryonic stem cells will do, and don't want to be bothered with researching the viability of stems cells taken from adults or the placenta and/or umbilical cord of new-born babies. Those who oppose the use of embyonic stem cells often blindly lump the other sources of stem cells right in with them.
In the end, we end up with perfectly legitimate means of aquiring stem cells being ignored, because both sides have gotten on their high horses and, instead of working with researchers and ethicists to find a way to achive the goals without destroying/killing embryos*.
This is what happens when a scientific and/or ethical issue (there doesn't seem to be too many scientific issues that aren't also wrapped up in ethical issues) enter the real of politics. All reasonableness and willingness to act for both the physical and ethical/moral well-being of others goes out the window. It becomes and issue of power and who will dominate who.
* And I don't buy the, "well, they were going to be gotten rid of anyway" argument. Just because someone else was going to kill your neighbor down the street if you didn't doesn't mean it's ok for you to go ahead and do it.
While you may feel one way or the other on the issue, calling the roughly 45-55% of the people in the USA known as conservatives in this country "a few" is a lie. (Big suprise, though)
I guess those "a few" get around..
Pan
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
When I read about stories like this, it makes me wish I were rich and could maybe help fix things in the US with large sums of money... like, here's 50 million to the EFF and oh, say, 100 million for stem cell lobbyists.
It'd be great if something like this happens regarding the DMCA... like maybe a software research foundation would lose funding from somewhere who doesn't like where US software laws are going.
But back to this article, I think Clark made a good decision but he shouldn't just stop here... He's needs to do something more to actually succeed in making change. And if he wants to make an even greater statement, he should send the money to a UK stem cell company. Of course, that's not a great choice because it doesn't help things here - we don't want him to give up hope on the US (even though he may be tempted to do so).
Great, so by withholding funds earmarked for education and research in the US, he advances biotechnology in the US how? I don't get it. The man holds a press conference to promote his agenda and then performs a dramatic logical contradiction. I wonder how Jim Clarks stock portfolio is doing.
He who will not reason, is a bigot; he who cannot, is a fool; and he who dares not, is a slave. -- Byron
Everything, literally everything is wrong.
Yes, because it is obviously better to look at the consequences of our actions when it is too late.
What ever happened to seperation of church and state, anyway?
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Private funding leads to patents, patents lead to closed information and closed information leads to hindered progress.
this news OLD. Which isn't really what the word 'news' means.
If he is pissed that the research won't get much Federal handouts for stem cell research, then they need to raise funds like the rest of the world. Not begging our government, they waste enough of our money on pointless things that they should not. I would rather buy a Quake VI game instead of paying taxes with the money saved.
Jim Clark cuts off nose to spite face.
Having taught electrical engineering at Stanford and benefited there from federal research funds, I can say that with no prospect of federal support, significant scientific inquiry in a field like stem cell research will stop. No research leader can forgo federal money.
Oh puhleez. There have been virtually NO federal funds spent on embryonic SCR, and that doesn't seem to have much hindered researchers so far. The TRUTH here is that these researchers saw easy, string-free government money, and now they're just pissed because it's been limited on them. Let's make the situation clear: scientists who DO NOT have the funds to continue their research have been given open funding by the government to work with the sixty specified lines as they see fit. Scientists who DO have funds can work on any cell lines they want, and do virtually anything with them. These people were thumbing it, we've offered them a free Cadillac, and now they're complaining that it's not a Mercedes...sheesh!
Could funds-free researchers do more with unlimited lines and no control? Sure they could, but when you're on the equivalent of scientific welfare you should be happy to get what you get. It is NOT the duty of the taxpayer to provide unregulated or unlimited funds to every scientist who think he can save the world...if only we'd give him a little money. Those sixty lines are as viable as any other embryonic lines currently available, and should provide a solid foundation for whatever projects those researchers may be pursuing.
Personally, I wish that Bush had added one more restriction to the pile. People like Clark are complaining because his visions of getting even wealthier were set back a bit by GW's decision. Clark, like many financial backers of SCR, were hoping to parlay early investments and later government money into huge financial gains for whatever breakthroughs they attained. MANY people in the field want to use government money to make a big breakthrough, so that they can then patent, control, and royalty-fee it to death. They want to use YOUR money to make THEM rich. Screw that. IMO, any government funding should come with the stipulation that discoveries MUST be passed into the public domain and remain royalty and patent-free. I have no interest in having MY tax dollars spent on projects designed to make people like Jim Clark richer.
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
That's about the silliest rebuttal I have ever seen. FAT may not be the most advanced file systems out there, but your talk about its alleged self destruction is ridiculous. I've been using FAT in its various forms for over 15 years now, and none of this crap occurred.
It seems to me you are just frustrated because you know he's right in many cases. Just swallow it and live on.
The US government didn't ban stem cell research, all Bush did was prevent the government from directly funding research on new cells. Private industry and nonprofit groups can still do whatever they want with the existing or new cells, so long as they use their own funds.
That said, Clark could distribute some of his billions to those groups to make up for money the government won't be giving them. But instead he's going to have a hissy fit and withhold that cash just to draw attention to himself (if he had given, we wouldn't have seen the story here). He's cutting off his nose to spite his face; shooting himself in the left foot because he's mad someone shot him in the right. It's totally counterproductive for him to do this.
And it could be worse for him - imagine a scenario where Jim Clark was taxed at 90% and had no free money of his own, and then the government decided who and what got the money taken from him. Jim Clark should thank God and George W. Bush (I'm not putting them on the same level) that he lives in a nation where he can choose who and what gets his money instead of having it chosen for him. Jim can send his Bush tax refund check and a whole lot more over to BioWhoever and let them use it for cell research instead of just bitching about Bush not sending the money straight to them. Bottom line: Jim, put your money where your mouth is or stop whining.
== Paul Rickard, Editor of The Microsoft Boycott Campaign ====
Anyone who believes in God is not a whacko. Those with some moral values left in us who have a problem with killing baby cells "in the name of science" are the torchbearers of the movement that will assure that no other Dr. Mengele will ever arise. Michael, go worship your idol, but keep your bullshit stigmas to yourself.
Personally, I didn't consider Penicillin to be worthwhile to medical science. I also though solid-state electronics was a big waste of time. We had perfectly good tubes, and Sulfa drugs were very promising, right?
The longest uptime I've had with my NAT box was 48 days.
You think 12, 19 or 48 days are an accomplishment? ROFL. You REALLY don't know anything outside your little Linux world, don't you?
Please come back when your older, the big people are talking now.
Not if he is going to be murdered for the specific purpose of harvesting organs.
I agree. He may conceal it very well, but it's clear that George Bush must have an IQ of at least 180. How else could he have gotten past the grueling intelligence tests required to occupy the White House?
Forced-birthers are too hung up on the quantity of potential life and demonstrate almost no concern about the quality of life for those who have developed nervous systems and can appreciate it. Their real concern is probably not life, but power. Religious extremists need to shut up and deal until such time as I can opt out of paying for oil wars in Saudi Arabia.
All in all, I think it's good that a leading technologist (who has done more for society than the sadistic oppressive whore known as Mother Teresa) suggested that mysticism has no place in science.
-jhp
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
Yeah, well, that's sure of hell true when the private donors desert researchers in their very hour of need, breaking promises in the process. It seems likely to me that this has less to do with principle than with Mr. Clark feeling a little less rich than he used to.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
You're using Mother Teresa, who you in an unqualified way call a whore, based on what you read on some Geocities site, written by an Indian who seems to be of the anti-Christian type due to the conversion of many Hindus by her church. Do you think Freemasons run the world too, or that the government is hiding "alien" technology.
In short, anyone who would resort to the type of baseness as name calling without merit and uses questionable sources shouldn't be taken seriously. And guess what? I'm not Catholic, either, so I'm not defending her for that reason.
Well, here we go...We now have to listen to how conservatives are once
again standing in the way of some Utopia paradise. If only we had
_unlimited federal_ funding in the _US_ we might not have disease.
People might not have to die. We'd live forever.
It's wrong to take another human life to save another. I know many
Slashdot readers don't consider embryos to be alive (and their all
going to be destroyed anyways), but a lot of people do. A lot of people
aren't willing to overlook the means because of the ends. What if
someone decided that it was OK to harvest organs from orphans less
then a year old? I mean, is a three month old baby alive? It can't
talk, it can't sue anyone, it can't even feed it self. If no one put
food in front of it, it would die. So why can't we SAVE the lives of
`wanted' children with `unwanted' children? Because it's wrong, it's
murder. Some may accuse me of forcing my right-wing extremist
conservative religious views on other people, but you have to draw the
line somewhere.
We got our notion that it's wrong to kill the innocent (no matter what
stage of development) from God. Early Jews and Christians forced
their extremists views on people who didn't like the look of their
child (because of a birth defect or it was a `she'). Their doing it
again today --- now that science has come up so many diverse and
interesting was to kill.
I guess well all just have to spend our tax money on boring things
like cancer research. Ugh. How many lives will THAT save?
Human organisms die in their 90's, some in their 40's, others in their teens, some shortly after birth, and many before birth. So, why don't we have license to kill them? They are going to die anyway. Laws against killing human organisms are unconstitutional anyway. Most religions have rules such as "Thou shalt not kill." Therefore, laws against killing violate separation of church and state.
and for those stem cells that are patented, well they get no federal monies.
Perhaps the government should *not* have granted patents on life, eh??
I agree with going full-speed ahead with stem-cell research, but some people believe it's murder, and if you think that you can't just let people make their own decisions.
You don't let serial killers decide whether they want to kill people or not, and if you think stem cell research is murder, you don't just take an anything goes attitude either.
It seems a lot of people who's general position(that we should do stem cell research) I agree with, justify it in ways that are patently absurd. What happens when someone says "you know I could make a clone of myself, and keep it locked in a cage, and then use it for organs when mine start to fail"? Sounds like good science to me. I don't see why the government should stop me from making that moral decision. Don't want to hold back progress.
You guys have the typical American attitude that the world stops at our borders. You probably think that Dubya's stupid, incoherent, and superstitious decision is going to kill stem cell research worldwide the way it's been killed here, don't you? As if no scientific research takes place anywhere else in the world except here in America, because we're so wonderful and advanced. Just look at our high school students' test scores in math and science. Look at all our native-born scientists (all ten of them). And just look at our president. We're very scientifically literate.
By not giving his $60 million to Stanford, Clarke can instead give it to a research facility that can do useful research with the money- without being hampered by illogical directives from a president who is openly hostile to scientific research. Bush has prohibited all potentially meaningful stem cell research in this country. But stem cell research (or cryptography research, or any scientific research for that matter) is not going to stop just because it's been prohibited in the U.S. by American zealotry and corruption.
Stanford is still getting money from Clarke- just $60 million less of it. They're still getting much more than that from him for other research (that the American government has not yet forbidden). Anybody who chooses to waste $60 million, by donating it to researchers who have been forbidden by the American government from making effective use of it, is a fool.
In related news, Russia is warning its programmers to avoid traveling to the U.S.A. I feel so proud to be an American.
Don't bring something into this world in the first place unless you want to be responsible for it.
If I'm non-religious I can't argue for morality? I'm not so sure of that...there are lots of decent moral people who have no religious beliefs but wish to uphold the sanctity of their own lives. Don't let your anti-religious plank of your platform rot and give in on you now...
i find it interesting that the creator of netscape thinks he has any say in modern biology. he created NETSCAPE. maybe i missed the genome mapping area of netscape, but i think he's a little out of place.
Don't take that as an approval of Bush's actions in this case or general. I think that, like most polititians, Bush is a weasel who'll do whatever he thinks will create the greatest opportunity for himself. I'm merely trying to point out some of the facts and inconcistencies of the current debate. Politics is an unavoidable concequence of the stupidity and foolishness of humanity in general.
sounds like a plan to me... I don't see how your comment relates to mine but what you said is common sense
Clark is a lying sack of shit. He just wants to hold on to his cash since he has driven so many companies into the ground. I guess he wasn't able to steal enough VC money (read: the pensions of millions of blue collar workers) before those companies went under.
Stem cell research: If it was really so promising, if there was even the slightest chance to find a cure for anything, private funds would be flooding in.
Federal spending on research: There should be none, zero. Federal funds should only be spent on national defense and foreign affairs (and a few other little things) as set out in the Constitution.
As for the "moral" debate: Let me say upfront that Gods are for idiots. Abortion is murder (and I think there should be many more). ot: Fur is HUNTING or TRAPPING or SLAUGHTERING.
The notion that we spend any money (public or private) to cure or maintain genetically inferior people is OBSCENE. Evolution works best when left alone. The core of the current debate is: Should we use frozen embryos not used by infertile couples for research. First, this is genetic material from people (at least one of them) that can't even REPRODUCE without massive intervention. And the idea is that we MAY find treatments to keep more evolutionary dead ends alive. This nonsense MUST be stopped at any cost.
Actually, compared to the WinNT weekly or even nightly reboots that I've had MCSE's recommend, those numbers are good. Compared to commercial unix or an IBM mainframe, they're not impressive. However, I've got a Linux server that's got a circa 400 day uptime - it's done that counter-rollover thing though, so the "uptime" command isn't accurate anymore.
Still not a patch on an IBM mainframe, but comparable to commercial unix, and miles better than the WNT "operating" system
Not to say that supporting scientists who persue research within the limits set by Mr. Bush is already a considerable step.
The nice thing about Windows is: it does not just crash; it displays a nice little dialog box and let's you press 'OK'
Oh, thanks. The white Taliban, then.
So, let me get this straight: He's concerned that we are going to be missing a revolution in biotechnology, and therefore he doesn't want to give money to drive research in biotech. Isn't this a case of the wagon before the horse? I mean, if he's concerned about us missing a revolution, how is he helping by withholding money?
Is your company running tools written by ma
As long as some of our script kiddies eventually grow out that larval stage, we'll be the kings of computers
You produce script kiddies, and Gates, while we produce Berners-Lee and Torvalds...
Seriously, though, this piece seems absurd to me. Whatever your views about stem cell research (personally, I think Bush came up with a fair compromise, and I'm no fan of Bush), clearly the ethical implications of biological research are crucial and are going to become even more so. Does Clark really think that _not_ having guidelines is the way to a bright future?
By the way I agree that characterizing the voters who don't think precisely as Clark does as "a conservative few" is a contemptible bit of class bias. Those people may not rub elbows with Clark, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.
This is something I've been starting to get concerned about. I'm seeing a pattern here. We have the DMCA squelching legitimate research in cryptographic areas. Russia has even gone so far as to put out a travel advisory for its programmers who are considering a visit to the US. Some academic conferences are also talking about meeting somewhere OTHER than the United States in the future. To avoid DMCA complications -- such as having conference speakers arrested.
Now we are also having restrictions on research on stem cells and nonreproductive cloning. As is well known, there has already been one prominent scientist in this field who has left the U.S. to do his research in England, where the government isn't nearly so hostile towards this kind of research. If I remember correctly, his work was ENTIRELY privately funded. But then it turned out that in one of the buildings he did some work in, the lighting was paid for -- at least in part -- by federal funds. And so because of that, his entire laboratory counted as government-funded, making is research illegal. The only option would have been to build an entirely new building, using nothing but private funds, to do the research in.
Unfortunately, compared to government funding, Jim Clarks $150 million would only be a drop in the bucket. Scientific research often depends on government support as its lifeblood. Especially expensive research.
The United States has for so long been a great example to the rest of the world of how much progress can thrive in a friendly environment with government support and academic freedom. (And, incidentally, freedom of speech.) But now it seems that we are determined to relinquish our crown as the world's leader in new advances in science and technology.
Someday -- far too soon, I fear -- the brain-drain will no longer be from other countries losing their best and brightest to the United States, but rather the other way around.
Mr. Clark can spend all his little heart desires on embryonic stem cell research of any sort. Mr. Bush's decision just says MY money might not be able to be spent on the same thing as his. Personally, I'm glad to see that my money, extorted from me at gunpoint, will not be used to destroy life. And yes, I actually think that in-vitro fertilization is not yet ready for human use since so many excess embryos are created.
There are 2 logical places to call "the beginning of life" for humans : conception and birth. Since a baby 1 minute before birth is little different than 1 minute after birth, and there isn't much of a scientifically defensible dividing line between birth and conception, I choose conception. The Supreme Court made up the trimester system to decide this issue, but I've seen a film of a co-worker's son well before the first trimester was over. Trust me, he was human. By the way, how many people have "fetus showers"?
Once that's been decided, the logic gets pretty simple. I don't create life to kill just to save my own. If we can't use IVF without excess life, then don't use it. People can adopt. Abortion also becomes murder. All of these actions have one thing in common: a choice was made to create life or proceed with an activity which creates life. Maybe some people want human life to be treated as cheaply as mice, but I don't.
Personally, if the federal government didn't extort nearly as much money from us, then we'd all be free to donate our own money to causes that we support without politics and government strings getting involved. Surely, that's something most people could support?
Bryan Baskin
Doesn't federal funding usually come with all sorts of nice can and can not dos? If you eliminate federal funding, and let people donate $160 million dollar funding, you eliminate the whims of Congress which change almost daily with each poll. Or only once each century, when they finally get back around to the issue.
Umm... no. He was going to donate the money to Stanford, not fund a startup with it.
The big compainies only want the federal funding for research so they don't have to spend the money, yet they still get the patents.
Possibly (companies always want something for nothing), but consider it from Joe/Jill Citizen's point of view. If Federal money funds the research then the government / public sector gets guaranteed dibs (low-cost licenses) to any resulting technology. Whereas if the research is funded solely by private interests, guess who reaps the rewards.
If all these big companies think its sooooo important to have more than these 60 stem cells why don't they fork over the money for the research?
Oh don't worry - they will. And so will the UK and other more enlightened governments. It's just the US public sector / universities that are in danger of falling behind.
-Renard
We can only hope this is true. Anything "discovered" in the United States is sure to be permanently encumbered by patent "protection," even if the research behind it is paid for by the public!
Any discoveries made in most of the rest of the world are much more likely to benefit mankind because most societies aren't as subservient to The Corporate Republic, and don't allow the kind of piracy for profit that Americans do.
The most important site on the Web is http://whale.to/
I plan on protesting the Bush enviromental policy by cutting down all the trees in my yard, that will teach Bush a lesson!
I will help beggars in the street by kicking them, that will teach Bush a lesson!
I plan on protesting the waste of our tax dollars by not paying my taxes, really it is not because I want to keep the money, it is because I stand on higher moral ground than everyone else.
By the way, his Shutterfly.com rocks!!! Did you know that now you can post photographs on the internet by converting them to what is called "digital" format? coooool. I've been waiting for a way to do this, thanks Jim!!!
Go ahead... I dare you to find an ICE COLD soda in London!
It can't be done.
These freaks try to serve Coke to you warm! If you order Coke in a restaurant you have to request ice, and even then they only give you TWO CUBES OF ICE!?
Ok, but get this. Besides selling warm Coke. They do not sell Mountain Dew anywhere!!!
It's hard to imagine a place on earth which does not have the Dew, but it exists in Europe. The really weird thing is that they run Mt. Dew advertisements on TV, but they've air brushed out the Dew logos and put in Pepsi. It's FREAKY!
The only explanation I could come up with is that Mt. Dew tastes even worse warm than Coke does.
The United States will never lose an edge to Europe in the tech market as long as we have plentiful stocks of ICE COLD Mountain Dew and Coca-Cola!
Bud is shit, you should try steinlager.
NZ has GSM on vodaphone at 900 MHz.
My vodaphone works just about everywhere except the sticks and some national parks.
PAL TV has better colors and resolution.
You can even tell if a newsreader has shaved today.
- Kaos games and encryption systems developer
sorry to be nitpicky, but I live in NE
and must say we have QUITE the infrastructure. UNO/UNMC/Creighton/UNL/very close to Qwest headquarters, Denver, I believe), AT&T (or whatever they want to call themselves this week), not to mention Union Pacific, Cox, ConAgra, and of course, First Data Solutions (just trust me on this one). A few years back a basement flooded on campus here and a little more than 4 nearby states had serious problems with email. We are situated between Chicago and Denver and KansasCity/StLouis and service em all, bub. You stated "population centers" and I agree, we aren't real populated, but we are VERY wired in our metros. I can choose a minimum of 2 cable modem co's and at least 1 dsl right now, and I have had great success with them all, no hokey backwoods crap here, thanks.
I'm going to help out the majority of you by explaining a few simple concepts of the US Constitution, as well as some principles of the free market - because most of you desperately need this assistance. It really bothers me that so many are so ignorant of the truth. Whatever you think the moral implications are of stem cell research, the fact remains that federal funding of it is unconstitutional. Most individuals on both sides of the political spectrum seemingly forget that the Constitution - the highest law of the land - settles nearly all of the issues concerning the size and scope of the federal government. It's when we as a nation choose deviate from the Constitution that we have problems.
People may not want to admit it, but the Constitution of the United States of America prohibits federal stem-cell research funding. I'm not saying that it prohibits the research altogether, but it does prohibit federal funding. If you don't believe me, just take a look at Article 1: Section 8 of the Constitution, which details the powers granted to Congress.
You won't see an "indiscriminate spending clause" or a "total jurisdiction clause" in there, because the federal government was never, ever granted those types of powers. The federal government is limited to some specific duties with very little wiggle room beyond that. The founders created a limited government purposefully, one that would serve to protect the nation militarily; one that would serve to preserve personal liberty. The founders did this because they hated the cesspool of European politics, and they knew the tendency for government to constantly expand and impose its will on its citizenry.
Federal funding for stem cell research is simply unconstitutional; a majority of the taxes imposed and duties executed by the federal government today are also unconstitutional. The legality of stem cell research must be left up to individual states, and the funding for that research must be left up to the private sector.
The checks on the federal government also arose from the realization that government can never match the private sector's performance. The simple economic principles of supply and demand and competition are at play here. When the government sets forth to complete an objective, it obviously has no competition and therefore no reason to work well. The government doesn't have to worry all that much about profits or losses - if it needs more money, it decides to tax the citizenry more. And the government can choose to embark on the wrong quest because it isn't constrained by supply and demand. The government is simply terrible at handling things that belong properly to the private sector.
The private sector, in contrast, will constantly improve products and services - making them better and cheaper - because if one company doesn't strike, its competition will surely do so. Capitalism is the only way to go, and the subversion of capitalism, like the subversion of the Constitution, will send us down a dark path.
A good recent example of the power of the private sector is the human genome project. The federal government provided funding to one group of scientists to do the work, while another group of scientists utilized the private sector. The government funded researchers had modest goals for completion of the product, when compared to the privately funded researchers. Long story short, the privately funded scientists finished much farther ahead of the government's scientists, simply because they had the incentive to succeed. The government's money was useless, because the private sector yielded completely superior results; the government didn't care about the money spent because they were only spending the people's money.
And if you still can't grasp my point about government entering into the private sphere, please think for yourself for a moment about the government programs you like or think are productive. Can you think of any? Tell me if you like any of these public sector programs:
The ever increasing cost of health care, courteous of government over regulation; subsidized government slums; the continued decline of American public education, despite the fact that the government spends a great deal more on it than it did 20 years ago; airline delays resulting from stone age technology employed by FAA air traffic control systems; being taxed half of your income; the sham of social security; privacy violations (carnivore, etc.); the IRS. . . Which of these features do you like?
If you like any of that, you must also want the government to encroach on the rest of the private sector. Would you like government fast food and government clothing? Would you like a government controlled Internet or government controlled computer corporations? Government control of the media? Should the government take over all property rights? I mean, since most of you believe that the government should have a role in funding everything, it's only logical that the government should have control over even more than it has now - it should, according to most of you, control everything. What a commie-fascist paradise that would be, huh? The really problematic thing is, though, this nation's concept of government would only have to mutate some additional steps before American totalitarianism would be realized.
Look, I'm not some kind of militia nut; I'm not preaching open rebellion against the sovereign. If what I've written has caused even one person to rethink his or her politics, then I would be a happy libertarian Republican. It is a real struggle to teach the truth, but it must be done. I will never back down when some challanges my principles, but no one ever said standing up for what's right is easy.
If you appreciate any of the points I've made, I encourage you to read your Constitution and live by it - don't just pay it lip service. Vote for those candidates who are truly committed to ending unconstitutional practices of government; vocally support those personalities who share a like opinion. We must make a choice, on this day, to either be committed to liberty and the true American way, or else choose automatically to submit to the inexorable march of this nation toward totalitarian rule.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
On a different note, this has everything to do with the movie AI (a most excellent movie, but a most stupid audience). The great question was:
If we can do it, should we?
-- Frank Hsueh, frank.hsueh@gmail.com
he who has all the gold
Makes all the rules.
at least he's trying to use his gold for good rules - overturning the recent legislation that stoppped the federal funding.
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
The American Government knows that if biological research is allowed to grow widly without controls, the results will be disasterous. This is the same reason that human cloning is being banned outright. It would open doors to the use of human life without accountability or assurance of ethical conduct.
If fetal stem cell research went unregulated, then fetuses would become a commodity to be bought or sold. Imagine waking up tomorrow in a world where a woman can get pregnant, have an abortion, and sell her unborn child on the black market for.. lets say $100,000. Then she could go have another night at the bar scene, and a few months later she'd get another $100,000. Lather, rinse, repeat. If she does this a total of 10 times, then she's just made a million dollars, and 10 children are dead.
Then suppose she's not independent, suppose she's a prostitute. A pimp with a dozen girls could make $1,200,000 per year this way.
I know this sounds wild, and will probably never happen, but if we don't impose restrictions and safeguards on biological research then something similar - or worse - could happen.
You enjoy nothing better than bitterly arguing for this or that, and then throwing words in like 'constitutional', that you do NOT UNDERSTAND. Stop acting like you care and ACT! If you are just interested in hearing yourselves talk than talk about football or music videos or some other equally irrellevant issue.
Just look at how intelligent discussions about the actual issue (if it is even the role of the US government in the FIRST PLACE) are conveniently ignored. Because you CANNOT argue with cold hard facts. Illogical and irrational emotional dream lands never compete with facts. You moderators also fall prey to this foolishness as well. Moderating is NOT aggreement or dissention, so stop treating it as such.
Frankly, I can't believe how quickly intelligent people want to go down this stem cell road.
There's a reason for this. Intelligent people understand the issues involved.
Did you see Gattaca and say "I want a society like that!".
No, I saw Gattacca and decided I would not like to live that way. What this has to do with stem cell research is beyond be. This has more to do with genetic modification of human embryos which are carried to term.
Don't you want to take a small step back and look at the ethical ramifications of using stem cells, with their own distinct DNA, as fodder for whatever experiments we want to conduct? Don't you realize this is not an end, but a beginning of some huge ethical situations?
There's nothing mystical about embryo stemcell DNA. It comes from the parents. They get thrown away by the thousands everyday. It's not much different from a menstrual cycle, or when you ejaculate and expunge several million sperm cells in one sitting.
Indeed, you're correct that this is the beginnings of a huge period of ethical uncertainty. This is due to emerging technologies which pose brand new ethical questions. I don't think we should ignore these questions, but talk about them. Only when we openly discuss ethical probelms do we come up with solutions. Out of these discussions we should be able to come up with ways in which we can continue life-saving medical research without making our society a miserable dangerous place to live.
Liberty.
http://archive.nytimes.com/2001/08/31/opinion/3
(Change the "www" to archive")
I think Jim CLark is doing a relatively sane thing to do. He's showing folks that this act by George Bush Juvenile has consequences by waving his pocketbook about, and by not moving dollars out of it.
Besides, he's not just acting to show Bush, but also Congress... and didn't I hear some noise about some senators proposing to broaden Bush's proposed limits???
we have a saying here..NE will be a great place..when it's finished :) There is CONSTANT construction, almost in a conspiritorial sense, as if nobody wants it to end. Mass transit seems to be furthest from the city council's mind, they're too busy trying to get to work on time in their own private vehicles to be concerned with a good solution to mass transit...but I digress..you may have seen omaha then, it feels like one GIANT suburb here...ugghh
Lately, stem cell research and cloning have caught the attention of Washington. Driven by ignorance, conservative thinking and fear of the unknown, our political leaders have undertaken to make laws that suppress this type of research.
:)
To quote "That 70's Show": BURN!
Someone needed to say it. Now if only someone in such a high position would do something similar in regards to the DMCA...
SIGFEH
The fact that he is withholding money from a university whose biological programs are among the best in the world (I may be biased, being a student there, but still) is indicative of our stubborn attitude regarding a lot of things in government and technology. While I agree that Bush should have given much more access to the stem cell lines and not have let his right-wing-quasi-morality step into things, the fact of the matter is that this is at least a start and must be taken as such. Gradual steps are necessary to build technology and research, and the money still could have been used.
A pity.
Cryptnotic
My other first post is car post.
It seems that there are people out there who think, instead of buying up whatever the elite tell them to. Sheesh.
Stem Cells come from a freshly fertilized egg, still in the Zygote stage and before Blasti-something phase. Back when it is only between 2 and 8 cells.
I spent a lot of time researching this when my wife and I pursued Invitro Fertilization. Fetuses don't come along until I bleieve 4th or 5th month. They are Embryo's for a while.
The problem with some conservatism is ignorance. You should really look into where Stem cells come from, sometimes they are 'fake' fertilized eggs that have no chance of ever becoming a human.
The last paragraph is my $0.02 and my opionon only. The rest is medical terminology.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
The American Government knows that if biological research is allowed to grow widly without controls, the results will be disasterous. -- Orbitalb
I find this statement wildly implausible and indefensible. Historically, pure scientific research has not tended to go wild and create disasters. Your cry for government intervention in science frightens me. We take such steps at our peril.
-- We all have enough strength to endure the misfortunes of other people. La Rochefoucauld
... since there is no suppression of stem cell research, only restrictions on federl funding. Nothing has even been proposed that would in any way restrict how his money would be used.
And the only recent change has been to allow some types of research with federal funding that was previously banned.
So, the situation gets better, not worse, and he pulls funding that is not affected in any way.
Yeah, I believe that's about political concerns.
While I can verify that the mass-market lagers are as bad as any I have tasted, on a trip to the States I found that the microbrews and specialty breweries are quite good. Sam Adams, though I suppose it doesn't really count as a "microbrewery" anymore, is available in Australia (and I'd presume also available in the UK) and is quite acceptable.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
. . . has nothing to do with conservitive politics.
Anyone who's followed the Bush modius operandi political knows that public office is a position to be leveraged for very specific monitary gain.
George Jr. is probably taking orders directly from George Senior on this one.
If you don't want to believe me, then follow the money yourself and come to your own (similar) conclusion.
IAAB (I am a biologist).
/. to consider the potential HARM he's doing - he's sticking it to the Shrub and the conservatives - to whom ANYTHING is fair if it hurts them - but god forbid somebody does the same thing to liberal institutions....
Mr. Clark is definately within his rights to give his money as he sees fit, but I still feel that he is being foolish, and many of the supporting opinions for him here have a very childish "I don't agree so I'm taking my ball home with me" attitude that ignores the realities and consequences of his actions.
Not all of the greatest biotechnology research is just stem cells. There are TONS of other important and vital research possibilities and techniques as well - and Mr. Clark screws them as well. This seems to be an endemic problem in the US - people are so concerned for their personal freedom, but forget (or ignore) their free choices' effects on everyone else. Mr. Clark doesn't like Pres. Bush's decision (fine - I hate it myself), Mr. Clark is concernced about the state of biotech research in the US, so he then screws the NON-STEM-CELL researchers by witholding funds - that's punishing everyone for who the new biotech center is important because of a governmental decision that they couldn't control! And now the research of many grous affiliated with the center will suffer, instead of possibly just the stem-cell groups. Brilliantly selfish, and egocentric, but it's not surprising, as I've noticed this trend in our US society for quite a while.
As I said - it is his money, and he has (and should always have) the right to spend it as he wishes, but I don't think it's right to be so congratulatory - he's screwing over valuable researchers who don't use any controverisal cells for something not their fault - and it seems he's doing some ego-stroking of his own. But I still expect lots of people here to support him wholeheartedly - far be it for
Sincerely,
Kevin Christie
Program in Neuroscience
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
crispiewm@hotmail.com
They say not to feed the trolls but...
In my experience, FAT32 is about the fastest file system out there (ext2 or any other *nix file system not withstanding.) However, I couldn't tell you how many times I've had a power outage, or some kind of other system-stopping event, come back, and the DOS partition is dead. Look at it with FDISK, and it shows up as FAT16.
Sorry, FAT is crap for safety.
Jim Clark is starting to see the writing on the wall and is looking for a way out of throwing $60 million down the toilet. With the stock market going the way it has been recently his finances are in the shitter and he's realizing he needs to keep every dime he has if he ever wants to avoid having to work again.
As for this article, I give it -1 Flamebait rating to michael. This should've never been posted. It's just another example of the liberal propaganda being circulated on this once prestigious geek news web site. Slashdot has turned into CNN for heaven's sake. People should've realized the doom of this web site when they started linking to so many articles on the New York Times web site! What's next? Is Jane Fonda going to become a celebrity editor? How about Ted Turner as a moderator?
Yes, Gore won by "popular vote", but do you happen to recal by how much? Around 1%. That somehow makes it a huge majority?? You're still dealing with 49% of the US who voted for Bush over Gore. Look at the numbers yourself. Democrats have 1 more person in the Senate--wow. That's a HUGE majority. I guess all the non-liberal folk best step aside while this wind of changes sweeps through the nation. *rolls eyes*
I'm all for you having your own opinion, but your statements are absurd.
What's a sig?
You can keep your darn Microsoft programmers.
and what did Clinton do for EIGHT YEARS about stem cell funding? Absolutely nothing. So give us a break
---
This guy must be on Crack.. I can't believe that such losers even get attention on news sites.
1. There is NO empirical evidence that stem cells are better than regular cells for helping in curing diseases.
2. Regardless, (even if they were) WITHOLDING 60 Million won't help cure anything.
3. This kook needs to keep his political hat off and either give or not give. (but not indian give).
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= - The Celtic - =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Here is the real truth. In 96 Clark Started ha company called Healtheon... This was after his ass was pushed out of SGI. Healtheon does really well, soon, Healtheon merges with another cash burning machine called WebMD. The stock sores to 70's, and then plummets to the low teens a few weeks later. Clark and all his other cohorts have lost millions... Boo-hoo. He's kicked out, and marty wygod takes over, slashes the shit out of the company... Clark manages to fuck up another company... The truth is this guy probably can't affored another 60 Mil, so he gets out easy... Check out HLTH if you don't belive me.
Does this not remind anyone of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged? In a country where, once again, the few whom have the ability to further the human race (in this case, by eliminating diseases which have previously been "uncureable") are hampered by the many who can neither understand nor control them, at least one person is saying "enough". He will no longer help to bail out those who seek to control others, who fear progress because they cannot comprehend it. And whether you agree with stem cell research or Richard Clark is irrelevant. He has made a decision about his money and its use. Luckily, at least that is still legal in this country.
Fuck you. Kill the damn babies. We have a ready made baby factory called China!
"I believe our country risks being thrown into a dark age of medical research..."
I guess Seaquest really was ahead of it's time... they predicted 2001 as the start of the Dark Age of Genetics
The problem really is not linked to "conservatism," which isn't, or "liberalism," which isn't. The problem is politicians and would be leaders wed to a dogmatic ideology, which blinds their ability to actually exercise "discernment." Instead their dogmas lead to mindless prejudice and simple, ignorance-based answers to complex issues. This kind of thinking leads to "conservatives" who support clear-cutting by the timber industry and "liberals" who want to conserve every tree, despite over-population problems within forests. It leads to men who think they have a right to opinions on abortion and women who think they don't. It leads to Amerincans convinced we have the best healthcare in the world and intellectuals who believe we should curtail our freedom of speech to protect the sensitivities of others, religious leaders who expect the non-religious to respect the "sanctity" of the their opinions, and scientists who think research is value free.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
psxndc
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
I submitted this story a couple days ago, got rejected. I was a bit less polite though.
Bush's decision does not ban stem cell research. It does not ban cultivating new cell lines. It bans federal funds from going specifically to this kind of research. That's it.
So. No federal funds, researchers have to use private funds for this research. So what does Clark do? Withholds $60 million for this research in a hissy fit, and also withholds $150 mills for the building of a biomed center. That's $210 million in private capital that Jim Clark is withholding in "protest."
Nothing like shooting yourself in the foot, Jimmy.
Derek
It is not the fault of the moderators, but the moderation here is just nuts. The parent post is rated +3. The parent post starts a strong new thread of comment. Obviously many people want to discuss this new subject. Yet most of the sub-comments are rated Off Topic.
To be logical, either the parent post must be rated Off Topic, or all the responding comments must be accepted as the healthy start of a new subject.
Instead, the commenters are penalized for responding to their interests. This shows that it is difficult to design a moderation system.
If anyone else thinks this way, I would like to discuss this with you.
Bush's education improvements were
Actually, the libertarian position is that this is precisely one of the very few appropriate roles for government: Protecting its citizens from the exercise of force. In other words, preserving the ability of individuals, who are presumed to have free will, to act in accordance with their own wishes -- so long as those actions do not impede the rights of others to do the same.
You make some good counterarguments regarding the FAA and taxation (though I might still argue that having even half of the fruits of my labors confiscated against my will and squandered on programs I don't necessarily support is an obscenity... nah, I'm not in the mood right now). I do want to dispute the way you conveniently shift the blame for health care costs onto insurance companies, though. The financing of health care is admittedly a mind-numbingly complex issue (trust me, I got a tiny but frightening glimpse of this writing billing software for doctors' offices in a past life)... but insurance companies are hardly the biggest culprit in the escalation of costs. (They may well be a culprit as far as quality of care goes, but that's largely a different issue.) Yikes, as I start to prepare my mental arguments I'm realizing I could spend all night on this, but a quick summary: Consider the costs of developing new treatments and drugs; the fact that employer-paid insurance protects most people from price signals and encourages overconsumption; the fact that government payments for procedures under e.g. Medicare typically come nowhere near covering the actual costs of those procedures, so that privately insured individuals end up paying more than they really should; the cost of litigation and insurance against litigation; and the fact that modern, Western medicine is simply a highly complex, labor-intensive, and technology-intensive business, one that people place great emotional reliance on. Oh, and don't forget those omnipresent symbiotic gremlins of supply (somewhat limited) and demand (effectively infinite -- can you ever be too healthy?). I'm sure there are the usual doses of fraud, poor business practices, and so on to top all this off. Anyway, this is getting way off on a tangent, so I'm gonna hit Submit now and be done with it...
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
After Clark's recent billion dollar losses with the dot com crash and his $250 million yacht purchase, perhaps Clark might be backing out to satisfy his ~$10000/day lifestyle, while still saving face...
just a thought
Incidentally, the data I've seen indicates that between 30 and 50 percent of ALL pregnancies end in spontaneous abortions, often before the woman even knows she's pregnant. If life really begins at conception, shouldn't we be worried about rescuing those billions and billions of unborn babies?
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
British beer is weak as piss (at least at the pubs). I was wondering why people were drinking 5-10 a night without getting particularly tipsy until I glanced at the label. 3.3%? Ugh... I think Coor's Light beats that!
Maybe Budwieser tastes horrible, but at least you only need to drink half as much!
"morality break for always"
break from
"You can just do every"
can't
"giving up our ethical isn't"
giving up our ethical foundation
One thing that I haven't seen discussed (apologies if I missed it and am duplicating a thread) is that grants of federal dollars come with all sorts of strings attached. This is one of the reasons that religious groups are wary of President Bush's proposal to start federal funding of religion-based charities.
The problem with the decision to restrict federal funding of stem cell research is that the restriction also applies to indirect costs. Indirect costs expenses are charged by the universities to pay for building upkeep, electricity, janitorial services, and anything else that is necessary to maintain the research space for the researcher. At Stanford University, for example, for every dollar that a university researcher spends from his/her federal grant, the university charges an additional 60 cents to the grant. The number varies from place to place, but it is usually a surcharge of this magnitude. It's sort of like rent.
In order for new stem cell research to be done in a Stanford University building, no federal funding can be used, direct or indirect. So if a non-stem cell researcher down the hall receives a federal grant, then the stem cell researcher in the same building may not use any money, government or private, to perform research in that building. The restricted research must be done in a dedicated building for which all indirect costs are paid for through private funding. The building costs therefore may no longer be shared among researchers in several fields, but must be paid for by only researchers in the restricted field. A new research lab building costs of order $400 million to build. This amount of money plus the upkeep costs is too much for any single researcher or small group of researchers to raise through private grants. So the main effect of President Bush's executive order is to move new stem cell research out of university research labs altogether, in most cases.
Okay, so the research is moved to private labs run by private companies, so what? The main effect here is that private companies will be reluctant to share new discoveries with the scientific community, unless the research is sufficently advanced to get a patent. Otherwise, there's no way businesses are going to recover their investment. Even worse, new processes can be kept proprietary if it suits the business strategy. Also, there is the phenomenon of the 'strategic patent,' where company A discovers that company B is working on a certain process, and to block them, company A will patent a necessary step in the process to make it cost-ineffective for company B to continue the research. (Note that this doesn't necessarily mean that company A plans on using company B's process.) New discoveries will still be made but the discoveries will come at a slower rate because of the lack of knowledge-sharing and of corporate hijinks.
So the net effect is that people who need new treatments will have to wait longer for them. When they do come, most likely the patents will be awarded to academic researchers in the U.K. or elsewhere and those countries will see the benefits of the new economies formed by this technology.
I wonder if the people who oppose this research now are going to refuse the new treatments developed thereof when it is their kids who are dying. I predict that they will find themselves able to temporarily suspend their moral judgements.
Dude, that was a prefect troll up untill the end where you failed to "let em' have it." The build up was quite nice: correct constitutional observations leading to standard randroid bable. I was really expecting to see goatse.cx or at least an even more obsurd punchline when I hit "Read the rest.." Unfortunatly, you never got beyond the standard Randroid crap. A read troll would have taken the next step to truely psychotic things. Now, don't get me wrong randroids are a loony buch. I've never met one who quite qualified as "sane," but their insanity and irrationality only match the mundane religious fundy. A good randroid troll should project the "I am John Gult, I live in a pit with my 100 wives, and the comming apocolipse will vindicate our faith in capitalism." Normal randroids just don't scare people anymore.
- Otto von Bismarck
I just got back from Europe
Europe is much more diverse than the US, and the regional variations of the culture are huge Compare London (western), Madrid (southern), Stockholm(northern), Vienna(central) and Bucharest(east) to get a view of this. The average GNP per person varies with about one order of magnitude between the rich and poor countries.
What part of Europe did you visit? That has very much to do with the quality of public tranport, and the telco stuff, etc. Scandinavia is extremely advanced in use of cellphones (Ericsson, Nokia) and other telco stuff. Central/Southern Europe is more conservative, but in US standard it would probably be not backward. However,you have probably not visited any former Soviet Satellites. In the Rumanian countryside horse-carts are just as common as cars. The public transport is quite good in Eastern Europe, as not that many people can afford any cars. I have seen a car where the windshield was replaced with wood, as the owner could not afford a new one. It was not considered peculiar. Cellphones are quite common in some ex-socialist countries, as the ordinary phone network is underdeveloped. The commie government could not listen to so many phones, so you could have a waiting-time of a decade before you got the phone.
In my experience, Scandinavia has excellent telco network, that is used in ways I think will take decades to implement in US. Checks are not used in Scandinavia. You have automates at malls that allow you to pay your rent and bills (if you don't use the net for paying them) and take out cash, if you are not using a credit card. In Finland, the police uses a cellphone to check your income from the tax register when you get a speeding ticket, as the fine depends on your income. Many younger Scandinavians do not have ordinary phones at all, and almost everyone (more than 90% of the population) has a cellphone.
The public transport varies a lot throughout. My exprience shows that it varies a lot. In Germany or Scandinavia the public transport is excellent. England is also pretty good, although I have not been there in a few years, and people say the railway systems is miserable these days. In Spain, Greece and Southern France, the public transport sucks. The Baltic states and Poland have a pretty good public transport, when you remember that their GNP per person is about 10% of that in US.
Could be a pretty damn fast trip to third-world status.
To become underdeveloped, USA would have to get into a long and steady decline. I think USA might stagnate into current situation, but more likely is a slower development when compared to European countries. Even so, it would take several decades before ex-socialist countries will have standards of living comparable to present USA.
I don't want to dismiss morality (people agreeing on how to live together in harmony), and I don't want to hold back science (people dicovering the world is stranger than we thought), but with this medical research thing, it seems the two are in conflict, and I wonder if "how many cells makes a human" is maybe a smart question to ask?
We humans consider ourselves the most superior species on the planet, and so we seem to use this to justify killing cows for food and blinding rabbits for shampoos. Well, ok, let's just say that indeed, humans are the most valuable. And we also know that all life has some value. So, taken individually, we can say that a human is more valuable/evolved than a cow, which is more evolved than an insect. And that, taken together, all life is part of the ecosystem, particularly the food chain, where we depend on 'lower' forms of life.
So, how many monkeys are you allowed to kill to save one human life? What's the ratio?
I mean, we think of nothing of killing bugs, as they are so primitive. But we start to feel a few pangs of guilt when it comes to cows. Or even a chicken, if you have to actually kill it yourself.
Now, here's the interesting bit: if you could save a monkey's life, by smashing a jar with a few human cells in it, would you not smash the jar?
In other words, we have some feeling for the fact that a few cells are just that, a few cells, despite them being of human origin. And that by manipulating those few cells, we may be saving billions upon billions of cells in fully formed humans... against disease etc.
So how many cells before we call it a 'person' ? (and give it the rights of a person)
I think the shocking thing for some people, myself included, is that the human body is not quite "god given" and is open to all sorts of modification and further evolutionary development. Ie. by blurring the uniqueness of "human" (by making variations on the recipe) we are weakening our status as 'unique, in God's image'....
Well, actually I'm for any sort of biological research which holds out the slim chance of eliminating fanatics of all stripes in one fell swoop. Liberal fanatics, conservative fanatics, they're all the same - a bunch of anal-retentive control freaks compelled by a sick id-driven desire to tell other people how to live their lives, especially if said target groups finds the fanatics views distasteful and unpleasant. Nothing like torturing your neighbor with fear and force for fun and kicks.
Of course, the fanatics always tell us moderates that they're doing it for 'our own good'. Yes indeedy, we're just too fucking stupid to figure out for ourselves whether the actions of our neighbors might end up with them pissing in our pool. Thank the gods the fanatics are around to save us from our evil fellow citizens, and from ourselves! Especially the religious shits - which include all those Gaia one-Earth-lets-all-go-back-to-subsistence-farming assholes who'd be dead in a week if civilization actually collapsed.
Christ, but I'm getting sick of all the motherfuckers who think they have the right to order my life about down to the tiniest detail. Who think they have the right to tell me that spending my tax dollars on scientific thing X makes me a minion of their mythical Satan, out to further the handiwork of goose-stepping Nazis. Who're in desperate need of a little post-natal abortion of their own.
Please, tell me there's a gene that promotes fanaticism, and a way to graft that gene into an airborne version of the Ebola virus...maybe then the rest of us will get a little peace and quiet. And a medical advance or two not hindered by some bible-thumping shlock with a woody for fetuses.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
There are many people, myself included, who don't want federal money going for this type of research.
Fund it privately? Great. Get the pharmaceutical companies in on it. Not everything needs to or should involve federal funds. He didn't make it illegal, he just said the federal govenerment isn't paying for it. If this decision sends money and researchers overseas because they somehow believe a goverment must fund all research into anything, tough, don't let the door hit you in the butt on the way out of the country...
So, you want to compare presidents based on how someone with highly dubious credentials imagines they would do on a test?
WTF is this "Lovenstein Institute", anyhow? Why are they entitled to any more credence than I would give to a Scientology personality test?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Once again most of the /. voices totally miss the point and pick at mere words of no consequence.
Government limiting scientific research and doing so on the basis of loaded emotional argumentation and political maneuvering is WRONG and dangerous to what all of us presumably care about.
Having a person of some reknown and clout speak up and act on his convictions about the wrongness of such government meddling with our lives and future should in all reason be a cause for cheer!
Intead we have picking on whether conservatives are or are not a "few" and whether liberals are better as if that is an issue of any substance at all when our government is abrogating more and more power to itself to control all aspects of our lives including technology.
Can we please pay attention a bit and concentrate on what is important?
Could this mean that he doesn't have the money, or has choosen to invest a large percent of that in another business venture? Could it be possible that he is simply waiting for some other reason. The reason I conclude this is because there really isn't a good reason to withold the money for the reasons he gave. The reasons to withhold seem to be very weak.
Just my thoughts from very early in the morning w/o much sleep from the night before.
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I'd like to set things straight.
/. posters (of which FFFish is not a member) know the first thing about biomedical research. I happen to be a member of that minority and can say without reservation, that no other region/country/union on this planet comes close to equaling the US in either basic or applied biological research.
It's pretty clear that only a extremely small minority of
Try visiting www.sciencemag.org, www.nature.com, www.cell.com and see for yourself.
(oh, yeah, those are sites of the top 3 journals publishing biological research - yes, on the planet)
As we know, most generalizations are wrong (except this one of course).
Where goverments are forced to participate in enterprises that normaly would be better left to the private sector is when the social costs of letting capitalism run unchecked are unacceptable.
A few examples:
-In rural communities all around the world some services are not introduced or even whitdramwn because they are not profitable, this include transport, banking, and ironicaly even telecommunications (if you live in Nowhereville, pop. 100, you can sit waiting for your broadband access until hell freezes).
-Some Oil comapnies in 3rd world countries could work more eficently laying off 50% of its personel and if they were in private hands would generate huge profits, nevertheless it is unacceptable to lay off 50% of employed people in poor countries.
And now, some examples of whay private is not always better:
-Microsoft.
-The British Rail Industry was privatised in the mid 90's, todays private trains are a disaster, all this after the intial "investors" sold their share at big profits and left the company and after several years of compromising security in order to make more profits. Several tens of peopls have paid with their lives for this.
Enough for know, tired of fighting blanket generalizations.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
American universities are at a big disadvantage here, since:
- they are more reliant on federal funds
than drug companies
- they tend to have their research labs on campus
So the recent decision will make the possible progress using stem cells happen abroad and privately, at least moreso than other biomedical researchIt's psychosomatic. You need a lobotomy. I'll get a saw.
What the green movements are oposing is the introduction of GM crops without proper assesment of the consequences. They don;t claim they are bad for your health, they claim we don't know and that more research is needed.
Given the fact that a lot (most?) processed food have already GM stuff anyway, and knowing how ignoratn we are about these matters, I think is only wise that every fanily has the choice to decide wether they want to risk or not any possible problems.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The large number of people who didn't vote is a scary figure - you say it represents 63% of your country's population. We had a similar poor turnout in the UK at our last election. Very worrying.
Worrying because it means the so-called representative governments aren't actually that representative, but more worrying because such a large number of people could not or chose not to participate. Something very wrong in our countries. Compare with 'new' democracies where people walk for miles and queue for hours to cast their vote.
"Some people think that homosexuals should be
executed (read the bible it says so)"
Actually, the Bible (the original Hebrew) says
no such thing, and the term used to describe
same sex is also used to describe someone who cheats in business with false weights, none of
which are treated as capital offences.
Doesn't it seem more likely that the current stem-cell media noise is an excuse for Clark? When Jim Clark committed this money ($150M IIRC) he was awash in cash and AOL stock from his recently sold Netscape. In other words he was plenty richer when he told Stanford that he was going to donate mucho bucks to them. Now the NASDAQ is sucking wind and Clark's millions aren't looking so vast anymore. So Clark seizes on a plausible-sounding excuse -- "it's those conservative stem-cell bastards!" -- and refuses to give up $60M of his own money. Based on reading Clark's argument, it would seem that Clark should donate MORE money to Stanford, to make up for the loss in government funds.
Look: you don't get to be the president of even a dot-com without having some knowledge of PR. Clark has spun an entertaining story that even the Times bought, and saved himself enough cash to secure a comfy retirement in the Adirondacks. Simple as that.
If you're reading that from people who are republocrats, don't use those numbers. They only split people between really conservative, and very conservative. Now, if you had several parties (like Canada, et all) where there was a conservative party, a liberal party, a labour party, a more conservative party, etc, you could potentially say how many citizens are "at least conservative enough, or in agreement with the views, of the conservative party" to support them (and imply they are conservative).
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Sure, some people (including those who thought they might live through the preservation process) may believe those corpses have the possibility of living, someday, down the road, if we decided to restore them and had the technology to do so.
But, we need to do the science (and that means getting federal funding) now, so, as long as whoever is living allows us to unfreeze these corpses and extract whatever tissues we need, there's no reason to be concerned over the fact that such an action inevitably "kills" these corpses, because they're already dead. Just because they might someday, through some scientific discovery, be resuscitatible is not our problem.
After all, this isn't about Morality, i.e. what a bunch of white European redneck racist homophobic Southern (they're always Southern, y'see?) Christian baptists that George W. Bush listens to.
This is about Science.
(Oh, yeah, and Federal Funding for it. Can't forget that, can we? It's so much more convenient for us scientists -- I include myself in that, since I'm the one withholding $100M from supporting them -- to have the Federal government collect money from y'all by force than for us to have to go door to door, hat in hand, pleading for money. We simply don't have the time for that -- we're scientists, after all! We're doing important work! The rest of you can just be happy that your tax dollars are going to fund whatever we decide is science at any given moment.)
Remember, just like embryos, these corpses aren't going to contribute anything to society ever again -- especially if we destroy them, which we've decided is inevitable. (Please ignore the fact that there are children walking around today who were once frozen embryos slated for destruction -- especially since that cannot be said for anyone who was once a cryogenically preserved corpse!)
Now, if Bush changes his policy and allows federal funding for extracting organic materials from cryogenically-preserved corpses, I'll have only one thing left to worry about, namely...
Practice random senselessness and act kind of beautiful.
Why are so many people replying to this article confusing cloning with stem cell research (read deep enough... you'll see it)?? Saying that they go hand in hand is like saying that cutting someones heart out with a spoon with the intent to kill is like open heart surgery preformed by doctors... you need to look more into the damn subject.
Yes, some people consider killing a fertilized egg cell to be equivalent to murdering an actual human being. No one disputed that. The question is whether or not such a view point is "ignorant". There was nothing in your post to suggest that it isn't, despite your tone of condescension.
Religous conservatives are ignorant of science, history, and usually even their own scripture. For example, in Exodus 21:22 it's explicitly stated that killing a fetus is in no way equivalent to killing a person. The penalty for the first is a fine, the penalty for the second is death.
Fundamentalists reject the accumulated knowledge of the human race because they think all questions are answered in a single book (pick one, any one) written thousands of years ago in our barbaric past. This, my friend, is the very definition of ignorance. Fundamentalists might not like being called on it, but it doesn't make the charge any less true.
They're the same group of people that have opposed every technological change throughout history. They'll have as much success with this crusade as they have with all their others. And they won't hesitate to enjoy the fruits of this research in their old age.
In another generation we'll be shocked that foolish people ever objected to regenerating new livers and such and be glad that we've moved beyond the ignorance of our ancestors.
Why the heck should he donate money for research that can't be done here? His money could be used to make a lot more progress if he gave it to a university in Europe instead. Why should he blow his cash on a hobbled US university?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
...That has nothing to do with what I was saying whatsoever.
Out of people who voted, it was nearly 50/50. That's a good deal of people. While you can speculate 'till the cows come home about what the people who didn't say anything really were trying to say, you can't prove crap. The fact that it was so close to 50/50 should show that the difference in size between liberals/conservatives is not very large at all--if any.
Jusy because both canidates sucked, and people doesn't vote, doesn't prove anything either way. It doesn't show a single thing. So your talking about it doesn't matter at all.
I'm not trying to say Bush is cool, and Gore sucks--or the other way around. I'm showing that, in what boils down to a REALLY BIG poll (say what you may, but that's a pretty dang big sample group), the Liberal/Conservative ratio is almost identical.
What's a sig?
The unregulated free market solution to health care led to such great products as snake oil and heroin powder.
Ease their pain and let them die
Give me more American pie.
Come on, this guy's an idiot if he thinks this makes any sense. He's mad at Bush for withholding funding, so he's going to withhold funding in protest? Get real. If he felt so strongly about people dying needlessly, he'd be donating MORE not less.
What he's REALLY doing is using this as an excuse to hold on to $60 million dollars that he doesn't want to part with. Let's face it, he got rich on tech and probably most of his portfolio went into the toilet with the economic downturn, something he wasn't counting on when he made that huge-ass pledge. Now he's scrambling to retain his wealth so that he doesn't end up working the drive-through at Burger King.
Oh and, hey, Bush is limiting federal funding of stem cell research! How conveninent! Just use the President as the scapegoat (a politician he publicly opposed, BTW), and everything's hunky-dorey, right?
require anyone working in the 60mil lab to not receive any federal grant/tax dollars.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
WTF? How'd my name get associated with biomedical?! I swear to god, I didn't write anything about it!
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One thing I don't get is how this whole decision about stem cell research came to rest in Bush's hands. Is this something where he's actually working with a congressperson submitting legislation, or is this an executive order?
This is clearly a heated political issue, and while part of me thinks that the "decision-makers" will probably never know enough science or philosophy to make a truly appropriate decision, the rest of me wonders how this could possibly be an issue that shouldn't be decided in congress rather than by a executive...
Weren't certain of your comments (eg, Looks like it's about to be the same in biotechnology) in reference to the stem cell issue?
Opps. Touche'. :)
(OTOH, ain't it true? Stomping stem cell research is going to make the USA a laggard on this most-promising line of research...)
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