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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.""
Now whose numbers are those "45-55%" from, how were they gathered, how old are they and what were their methodology? Were thewse numbers from a conservative think-tank, done 6 years ago, done using push polling and were the loosest standards for "conservative" used? If so that is a useless number. I'd look at the latest elections, Gore won the popular vote, the Democrats control the Senate and control of the House is slowly slipping though the fingers of the Republicans. Getting back on topic, in the polls I heard 60% of those polled were for stem cell research.
Impersonating Tycho from Penny Arcade since before there was a PA.
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.