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.""

Comments

"A conservative few..."

[Panaflex]

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

Re:And this helps by doing what?

[blamanj]

If he's really concerned, he could spend that money on lobbying efforts and on educating the public.

No, he's much smarter than that. By withholding (note that he hasn't canceled or revoked the grant) the money, he's created an incredible amount of press and discussion, probably far more than he could spend on fattening up congresscritters and their lobbyists.

Plus, he can renew the debate at any time by giving the grant money to a university in Europe instead of to Stanford, which would really pack a politcal punch. I think he's a pretty smart guy, he gets the lobbying and press relations for free and can still spend the money on the research he originally intended to support.

Re:And this helps by doing what?

[BarefootClown]

even if they aren't able to use it for stem cell research directly

Sure they can. President Bush's decision was that federal money may not be used to generate new stem cell lines from fetuses. Private money, like Clark's, can be used for anything. Federal money can even be used for some research, including research on existing cell lines, and creating new lines that do not come from fetuses (i.e. cells coming from adults, or from umbilical cords). Bush's decision does not affect Stanford's use of Clark's money in any way; Clark is just throwing a hissy-fit.

Re:Get a grip!

[dachshund]

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

First of all, I'm glad you actually addressed this issue. George Bush somehow neglected to tell America what happens to the leftover IVF embryos not used for research, nor did he express his disgust at the number of "potential" human beings created simply to be tossed in the incinerator. It surprises me that we can so easily tolerate the "mass-murder" that is in-vitro while at the same time being so outraged over the small number of embryos that are used for research.

As far as your not buying the argument, well, what is there to say? Drawing analogies between living humans and a couple of cells in a test tube (cells that will never be allowed to come to term and aren't capable of suffering) is truly a futile intellectual exercise. The embryos are being created, they are being destroyed for IVF. All of this is tolerated even by the right-to-life crowd because it's part of the process of creating life. But embryo research could also have that potential. The potential to save lives that already exist, and are capable of suffering, should be more of a justification than the "artificial" creation of lives that nature wouldn't allow. I suppose it's also worth noting that embroys can be twinned and twinned... So if I destroy one embryo am I guilty of killing one person or all of the "potential" people that embryo might have produced?

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

This is just a gross simplification. Many, many researchers are working in these areas. Believe me, as clever as they are, the media did not invent the notion of using the placenta or umbilical cord to gather stem cells. If you're reading about it, that means that somebody is out there doing the research. Even if non-embryo sources worked as well as embryo sources, halting all research in order to refocus on new ways to harvest stem cells could waste years. During that time, a lot of (real) people could die. Are those lives worth less than the "lives" of a few cells? And how much farther does this go? Should we worry about every reproductive cell our body loses, every sperm cell or egg?

The truth is, the American people are being taken for a ride by a few people with some very interesting ideas. Ask people on the street what they think about stem cell research and you'll get a lot of concern about the destruction of embryos. Ask the same people how they feel about IVF and they'll tell you that helping parents have babies is a good thing. Tell them that embryos get thrown away in the process too, it'll be the first time many of these people have heard about it. A lot of the remainder will justify it with the "creation of life" argument. Given the opportunity for some independent thought, most people won't equate the destruction of early embryos with murder. On the other hand, tell them that evil scientists are creating little babies for spare parts, and these people will freak-- provided the "right" people say it enough.

Re:Message to the Masses About the US Government

[Daffy Duck]

Let me guess.. you've just recently been re-reading your Ayn Rand collection?

I don't think the world is as black and white as you sketch here. For example, those terrible airline delays aren't only caused by aging FAA equipment, they're caused by the deregulated industry's capitalistic incentive to minimize costs by having fewer and larger hubs and maintaining fleets of the barest minimum possible size.

Being taxed half your income sucks and does seem unconstitutional, but it's better than the 90% brackets that used to exist (most ironically even through the 50's, when the nation was in a frenzy to rid itself of those damn communists), and still much lower than most other nations.

I don't see why you think government regulation is responsible for the high cost of health care. Don't you think the insurance industry has a whole lot more say in this? Ask a doctor.

The free market is difficult to apply to health care - you can't really comparison shop. Are you going to have the same operation done by three different surgeons to see who has the best price/performance ratio? Should you have no more qualifications on which to judge your doctors than the content of their advertisements? The unregulated free market solution to health care led to such great products as snake oil and heroin powder.

In principle (yeah, I know), the goverment funds research for things that will serve the public good. If all of this research were only done for a profit motive, then it would benefit only the highest bidder.

The driving force of capitalism is greed. You want your stuff. I don't know who I'm quoting here, but someone said "your property is only yours through the courtesy of those who don't take it from you." Who's protecting your property rights? The police - the government. Care to privatize the police force? That's great if you're the one with the most money to hire soldiers, and it will quickly lead to feudalism, the ultimate in freedom.

Part of government's function is to deal with the fact that we're living in a society and have to have a better way of getting along than just the law of the jungle. Centralized government clearly isn't the answer, but neither is a loose geographic agglomeration of 300,000,000 independent countries.

I've been ranting so long I forgot what I was saying. Well anyway, um, I disagree.