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Michael Bloomberg Defends Science
blonde rser writes "This weeks Scientific American Podcast plays excerpts from NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg's commencement address at John Hopkins University (text and video can be found online).
Once he gets past the standard pomp and circumstance he makes a strong, pro-science speech. It is impressive how he very directly demonizes those that would politicize stem cell research, global warming, Terry Schaivo, and evolution." From the speech: "Hopkins' motto is 'Veritas vos liberabit' - 'the truth shall set you free' - not that 'you shall be free to set the truth!'" Stirring stuff.
I wholeheartedly agree. It is unacceptable that stem cell research is being outlawed pretty much everywhere. Laws shoudl be made about what is allowed to be done with stem cell research, for instance that you cant' clone whole humans, that seems nasty, but things like organs taht match the one that needs them perfectly should be allowed. I for one would like to have my heart replaced by what is practically my own heart once this one becomes too weak and/or sick.
With stem cell research there is no waiting for organs, no rejection, everything is just perfect. But nooooooo, that would be too wrong to have, hell I can't even think who would be at loss if this were true.
except once
michael bloomberg in 2001
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
While I applaud Mr. Bloombergs speech to me he represents a rather puzzling person. Why is this guy a repulican. Not just him but also people like arnold schwarzenegger, Andrew Sullivan etc. I mean if you are not against gay marriage, if you don't think pre-emptive war is a good idea, if you are pro life then why are you are republican. Before anybody says anything about fiscal responsibility or smaller government I will ask you to go look up the track record of republican presidents regarding those items.
I am especially puzzled about Andrew Sullivan. This guy is gay, the republican party tried to pass a platform saying that homosexuality was a disease!. They are trying their best to deny him the right to marry, to serve his govt, live wherever he chooses etc and yet he is still a republican. Can anything be more important to you then having the same rights as everybody else in the country?
Weird.
evil is as evil does
Its peculiar that Bloomburg should be calling for these matters (stem cell etc) not to be politicised since he, as a politician, has got to be aware that everything has a political dimension somewhere along the line, even if indirectly, which is why politics is so very important and not to be trivialised or dismissed.
Politics at its height is concerned with these profound questions; not just lowely administrative questions of how the rubbish/garbage is to be collected, and the roads maintained.
Anyway, Bloomberg is in an odd position - supporting science and yet also supporting this administration. It's not like Bush and company are well known for thier support/funding of scientists...
Do not downmod posts "overrated" simply because you disagree with them.
Neither party is willing to let a few inconvenient facts stand in the way of their political agenda.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Dude, Terry Schiavo is not a terribly complex issue, and there was nothing "questionable" about her state. As was clearly documented at the time, her brain was gone. Tragic, but true. Those desperately trying to pretend that she had some higher-order function left were denying science, medicine, and facts. The craven politicians trying to get mileage out of the tragedy were disgusting, even by Washington D.C. standards, with actual-doctor Bill Frist the most egregious and hypocritical.
"It is unacceptable that stem cell research is being outlawed pretty much everywhere"
It's mainly just been outlawed in the US, and specifically in projects that take funding from your government (as I understand it).
It's a quite bizarre situation. If stem cell research had been banned outright, then it would make more sense as at least it could be looked at as an ethical decision. This ban on funding is an entirely political point - the US science system has been hobbled entirely to make a political point.
Still - when your scientists are phoned and asked which party they vote for, before they get their money (and nobody seems to care)
*shrugs*
You reap what you sow.
The US is a very conservative country - and there is genuinely very little to separate the Democrats and Republicans ideologically.
Both parties are broad churches containing members of differing views on pretty much all of the 'issues'
The only persons of interest are those at the extremes - you can probably tell the differece between a right wing republican and a left wing democrat - but between the two it gets a little fuzzy.
He doesn't think stem cell research funding should be denied - yet belongs to a party where the majority of members (and their voters) think it should be.
Whilst it's a political issue - he's got to either help withold the funding (something he doesn't believe is right), or piss off his voters (which he really doesn't want to do).
If it stops becoming a political issue, then the funding decision isn't his to make and if voters demands he withold it, he can just say it's not his problem.
...on the GhostBusters.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Because of something called facts. Facts say Terri Schavo was not going to recover. Facts say she gave orders to have her taken off life support in such a state. I like to base my opinon on facts, but you might digress.
Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.-- Frontinus, 1st cent. AD
This motto is from the Bible: John 8:32 Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Come on! You know that facts have a strong liberal bias!
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
The funny thing is that stem cell research isn't tightly controlled. In fact I'm not sure there are any real limiting restrictions at the moment. There is certainly a ban on federal funding of most stem cell research (a ban to which Bloomberg is referring). However, if some old rich white guy wants to drop a few billion on stem cell research in the hopes of extending his own life, he is completely allowed to do that. And I don't think their is much of a political movement trying to deter him from doing so either.
When he wrote "The truth shall make ye fret". May have just been a typo in a newspaper but perhaps he was onto something...
"Facts shall set you free" would seem more appropriate when talking about science, but what the hey.
Why is this guy a repulican.
...Bloomberg, a lifelong member of the Democratic Party, decided to run for mayor as a member of the Republican Party, reportedly to avoid the crowded field in the Democratic primary.
Wikipedia:
That he's a Republican In Name Only makes complete sense. I laud him for this since there simply needs to be more Republicans who speak up for science, intellectual thinking and reason.
What's so bad about being lazy? What if there was a war and nobody showed up?
*sigh* I'll bite...
Two words should knock this one down: Evidence please.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
The fact that many contemporary liberals have an affinity for incessantly regurgitating slogans and "jokes" (like the one above, by John Stewart, I believe) is one fact which definitely does not have a strong liberal bias. Since your assertion claims that all facts "have a strong liberal bias" (which I define as presenting liberals and positions held by liberals in a positive light), we encounter a contradiction; therefore, your assertion is incorrect. Quod erat demonstrandum.
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
Actually, it was a joke from Steven Colbert's speech at the White House's Press Dinner of some kind a few weeks ago. And as such, I'm guessing he was just joking.
Maybe it's just me but I find it very scary that somebody holds a 'pro-science' speech and gets commended for it, the fact science has to be defended in this day and age is bad enough already, that there are so few people with cloud doing it that we can find the time to cheer about individual cases of it happening is even scarier.
Your arguement is a complete red herring. The government sponsors research. Saying that when it makes exclusions it's ok because they never should have funded research in the first place is fallacious at best.
It's been a long time.
Actually, it was a joke from Steven Colbert's speech at the White House's Press Dinner of some kind a few weeks ago.
:)
I thought I saw John Stewart use it on his show a while back. I could be mistaken though (I did use the term "I believe" to indicate my less than full confidence in my assertion). Perhaps I confused the two as Colbert used to be on Stewart's show.
And as such, I'm guessing he was just joking.
I acknowledged that it was supposed to be a joke in my original post.
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
I like how he talks about the importance of rigorous scientific investigation, and then comes out in support of gun control against overwhelming amounts of data to the contrary. "Political science" indeed.
"The Prince" is about power. Politics is about government. If we depoliticise then all we are talking about is power, not government, and so Bloomburg is recommending Machiavelli.
At worst it is a simple postpartum abortion (i.e. termination of the fetus a few weeks after birth)
I'm pro-choice, but that is stretching the definition of abortion a bit too far. Those female infants (not fetuses) are beaten to death, drowned or simply left on trashheaps to die of exposure. That's not abortion, that is murder.
Excuse me, wtf r u doin?
Bloomberg has been one of the biggest fundraisers for Bush, since he "switched parties" from Democrat to Republican to get Giuliani's endorsement in the 2001 NYC mayor election. And for 5 years his news network has ignored Bush's attacks on science, like the rest of the mass media. Now that everyone is hearing how Bush destroys science to please the retards who want to vote down the "brainy" people to their level of medieval slavery, there's a big backlash. Especially in NYC, where being smart is second only to being rich as the ticket to being rich.
Bloomberg is talking science in the public speeches for the media, and raising money for BushCo behind the scenes. Just like Arafat used to talk diplomacy in English on TV, and terror in Arabic through the grapevine.
--
make install -not war
It's Johns Hopkins, not John Hopkins. Sheesh :-(
Oh, yeah, this is Slashdot -- never mind.
Do you even know what totalitarian means? Please read this. Until the 20th century, most states lacked both the resources and the desire to "regulates nearly every aspect of public and private behavior." Statist communism, on the other hand, required by definition that "nearly every aspect of public and private behavior" is regulated to ensure an equal outcome for all.
I beg your pardon, but communism was supposed to be ruled in "communes" / communities, that would set its own agenda and its own decisions about local things. Nowhere is it stated that for communism everything had to be centrally organized by a power-hungry and self-serving elite. Soviets in Russia turned into propaganda-machines and pupeteers for the ruling elite, thus negated its own function.
Communism has been functioning well in small communities, indeed, for small native village-societies it is really the most natural way to rule. Everything is shared, maximizing efficiency in a situation where not everybody has everything they need. Native Indians had little or no concept of ownership of land, animals, tools and many other things.
It is inherently connected with a deep sense of community, fellowship and trust. Something which is impossible after a bloody revolution, or just by plotting red areas on a map. Something which is ONLY possible by spiritual means and a common spiritual bond.
You have been brainwashed / misinformed about communism. No religion or ruleset dictates villaneous and predatory behaviour on its own populace, but the ego of man can justify anything to force his own will upon others, either for self-gratification or for misdirected belief in the "greater good". Usually, the ends never justify the means, it's the other way around: The means makes the end.
Unfortunately, people nowadays lack the very foundation to understand that a society can be ruled, not based on fear and force, but through trust, love and compassion.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Some people (most notably the catholic church) are against In-Vitro fertilization because of the "waste" of fertilized eggs, although society has deemed it acceptable. The same should be done for embryonic stem cell research.
Listen closely and tell your friends, "Embryonic stem cells do not come from aborted fetuses."
I didn't mean to question what you know. I was just stating the actual source. But it was actually a rather recent event (3 or 4 weeks ago, I believe) so I can see how not everyone would know it. But my main qualm is that if you know he's joking when he states "reality has a well-known liberal bias," then you know he actually KNOWS reality has no liberal bias. However, you apparently have a bias against liberal bias, which means you don't stay in touch with reality, which means you are wrong, which means he wasn't joking and was in fact stating a truth. QED.
(And yes, that was a joke, too. =p Reality has no bias, only fools who think reality is always in their favor)
And here, we break into song. Everybody now: "Every sperm is sacred. Every sperm is great. If a sperm is wasted, God gets quite irate."
As for science vs. religion I'm issuing a restraining order. Science should stay 500 yards from religion at all times.
(Lisa the Skeptic)
You can't handle the truth.
I didn't mean to question what you know. I was just stating the actual source. But it was actually a rather recent event (3 or 4 weeks ago, I believe) so I can see how not everyone would know it.
:P
I understand that Colbert used the joke at that event (coincidentally, I read a transcript of it shortly after it happened); however, I was under the impression that before that (quite a bit before, when I still watched the Daily Show) John Stewart has made a similar (same) joke; of course, at the point, it was a throwaway line, and it does not seem to have been popularised before the media event featuring Colbert. Again, I may be wrong, and my mind may be playing tricks on me.
But my main qualm is that if you know he's joking when he states "reality has a well-known liberal bias," then you know he actually KNOWS reality has no liberal bias.
Sometimes people say jokingly what they believe to be true, but do not have the courage to simply assert.
Frankly though, my complaint was that I had heard that joke too many times.
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
Sigh, I'll bite as well...
I bow to the great Flying Spaghetti Monster! For without his grace life would be impossible. Oh yeah, the lack of pirates is responsible for global warming!
"We're all mad here." --Cheshire Cat
...and it's news that the mayor of some city has made a pro-science speech? What kind of just-crawling-out-from-the-dark-ages country are we talking about?
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Actually, it's The Johns Hopkins University. During my undergrad years there, some people took great pleasure in constantly correcting other people with regards to the name.
Okay, yeah, I was one of them. Oh well.
Yes, it's true. This man has no dick.
This is a consistent pattern the Bush administration has followed of favoring liquidation over building long-term capitol. The pattern is mirrored by promotion of tax cuts at the expense of national debt, oil/mineral development on public lands vs. long-term interests of wildlife/resource conservation, promoting Detroit's inefficient (but profitable) SUVs over supporting CAFE increases and KYOTO adoption. All politicians face pressure to look at the short term, but the current administration's embrace of this approach is unprecedented -and destructive.
Republicans used to be about small Government. Bloomberg is doing it. Washington Republicans are doing the exact opposite.
He's fiercely pro-business, so much so that he's essentially running the NYC administration and government as a business. The Washington Republicans are running the country as a huge piggy-bank of favors to The Party supporters.
Bloomberg has done wonders in improving the NYC services. The 311 service is just amazing in how well and inexpensively it does what it does. The Washington Republicans were in charge of the Katrina mess.
When Bloomberg cuts services, as unpopular as that is, he cuts the ones that don't perform. The Washington Republicans cut the services their faith based agenda doesn't accept no matter how efficient they are.
I'd rather have more Bloombergs as Republicans (or Democrats for that matter).
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
Listen closely and tell your friends, "Embryonic stem cells do not come from aborted fetuses."
No, they come from aborted embryos.
it's John S Hopkins
This isn't that hard!
Goddamnit!
AccountKiller
On another note, John McCain is a great mix of qualities from both parties while being independent enough to avoid the sheep speak of the parties--minus right now (as he's campaigning for the primaries and doesn't want to lose the primaries again). I wish he would take the strong science approach that Bloomberg did, but at least he did speak up against the Republicans catering to the conservative Christians (although, again, during the primary season he's playing nicely with that group).
Read my blog posts on usability.
NYC mayor made very strong following points while speaking to the Yeshiva university (association of sugar daddies, Trump, Indian parlamentaries...):... (do I need to continue? )
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
What really happened was, of course, that the Schindler's were revealed as slanderers and liars and the politicians were revealed as unethical bastards who had no real interest in the case at all.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Do you know why this bit of rhetoric is "stirring stuff"? Well, aside from its later day use as the Central Intelligence Agency's motto, its also taken from John 8:32. Its the bit where Jesus charges his disciples to go into the world and preach the gospel despite the world's resistance to the message: "If you hold to my teaching, you are my disciples. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." I absolutely love the irony of using this to castigate religious conservatives vis-a-vis the Schiavo thing: trust me, your honor, they know the whole passage. It doesn't quite lend itself to the reading "Don't worry, Science will light the way".
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
For example, we never should have interfered with Mengele's important work:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mengele
My point is this: it's nice to know things about the world, but sometimes there's a cost associated with gaining the knowledge. At its best, politics is the expression of the people's will regarding where in that cost/benefit curve we're willing to live.
I'm not saying that the Bush administration is properly representing the people's will, but as Mengele showed us, sometimes the means used to gain scientific knowlege isn't worth it and the scientist must be restrained. In some people's minds, the embryonic stem-cell harvesting is similar to the Mengele behavior. And that's a metaphysical topic of discussion, not a scientific one.
Therefore, it is not murder. Humans have souls, Chimps don't have souls. It's easy to tell the difference. Prove that a fetus has a soul, or go dive onto a pike with your pro-life supersticions.
Blar.
Yeah, I went there, and it's a reflex.
..........FULL STOP.
I don't have a soul, nobody has a soul. It is all bullshit made up by mystical savages to explain the big scary world.
If the baby is in the belly, the mother gets to excise it if she wishes.
Blar.
Like most of the memorable things JS says, it's not really a joke.
It just means that where matters of fact are concerned rather than mere opinions, the liberals tend to be right and the conservatives are plain wrong. "Conservative arguments" tend to involve denying the facts and trying to recast them as matters of opinion. This is the case for a wide variety of topics: sex education, economics, evolution, weapons of mass destruction, Hannity being a nutcase, etc.
And that, people, is a fact.
It's weird that the postmodern "philosophies" derided by conservatives are basically being utilized by them in their attempt to recast all uses of language as rhetoric.
"by that I mean people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots" DECS
At variance with your definition I had understood that politics is the science of government, not power.
Embryonic stem cell research, on the other hand...
My point is that even while overall stem cell research is still in its infancy, and so much could be learned from say, umbilical chord stem cell research, and other kinds of stem cells, why have to delve into embryonic stem cell research?
And if embryonic stem cell research is so important, why use HUMAN embryonic stem cells? The boundary between research and taboo is blurry with embryonic stem cells, why not take a safer route? There's still much to be learned, why the need to use embryos for that?
Worse, if someone opposes to embryonic stem cell research suddenly he's labelled as fundamentalist and then flames about the Dark Ages start to appear. Who are the intolerants then?
... Democrats will shit all over him. He had the temerity to spend his _own_ money (ewww, successful capitalist!) instead of ingratiating himself with Tammany, and therefore owes no obeisance to any municipal labor union or special interest group. That _REALLY_ pisses 'em off no end.
I <3 Bloomberg, even though I disagree with him regarding concealed carry. And now that I live in the outskirts of Philadelphia, I really appreciate what Giuliani time and Bloomberg have done against crime in NYC. Philly is, regarding crime, where NYC was say 1986 or so. They just need a mayor and police chief who will crack down using computers, screw-the-unions accountability, badass tactics, forgive the occasional plunger, and break the back of violent crime by any means necessary. Then that mayor can leave and a new mayor can apologize for the 'excesses' of the previous administration, and by then the citizens will be grateful for the increased peace and security of their neighborhoods.
I think Reagan was a very good president. I'm not excited about the deficit, also he started a few too many wars for me (as Republicans seem to do).
But he did some things right, he made the business climate work in this country. If you weren't around in the 70s for 14% interest rates, perhaps you read what he did and misinterpret it. The government was taking too much money from businesses and disincenting people to build businesses, expand the economy and build this country.
He also understood that once elected, you represent the entire country, not just the people who elected you. This is very unlike George W. Bush. When California had problems with his buddy Kenny Lay extorting money from the citizens and turning the lights out, he did nothing except invite his Texas buddies over to figure out how to make it possible to extort better. Cheney said it wasn't a federal government problem, and that "it's classic economics, price caps will neither increase supply nor reduce demand". And yet, months later when price caps were finally put in place, they solved the problem immediately by ending the profiteering immediately. Prices went down, supply returned to 100%. Bush didn't care about what happened to people in California, actually seeming to prefer to extract revenge on them for not voting for him.
And the McCain. I used to be a huge McCain fan. But have you seen him recently? Did you see him on Meet the Press? After Karl Rove push-polled a rumor that McCain fathered a bi-racial baby out of wedlock in 2000, and McCain he could never get past that, that Rove was a bad person. Now he's kissing Rove's ass. He said (correctly) Jerry Falwell was an agent of hate. And now he speaks at Liberty University?
I liked McCain. He stood for something. He stood for inclusion, he stood for conservatism that didn't mean the government telling everyone what to do and not bolstering Southern Christianity as the national religion.
Now he's useless to me. If he'll flip on those things, what will he stand up for?
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I've seen it on the internet for years, I don't think Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert came up with it. I think it may have originally been "reality has a liberal bias", until maybe a year ago that is how it was usually written.
"Hopkins' motto is 'Veritas vos liberabit' - 'the truth shall set you free' - not that 'you shall be free to set the truth!'" Stirring stuff.
e rs on one side and the non-materialists/relisious/right-wingers on the other. And they both use the same political means to achieve their goals. I think we need to inject a little honesty in the debates and stop taking sides so much. But I know I'm dreaming. So all I can say is, "may the best/strongest camp survive, but only if they truly have the truth on their side!"
Indeed, but it cuts both ways. We have the materialists/atheists/environmentalists/left-wing
This one was from a couple years back. You can read/see other Hopkins commencement speeches at http://www.jhu.edu/commencement/speeches/ including one by Al Gore from last year I believe.
"We had a choice between a 'tax-and-spend Disneycrat' and a 'don't-tax-but-spend-anyway' Rupertican."
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
> holds a 'pro-science' speech and gets commended for it
I'm far more disturbed that politicians can label their ethical beliefs as "science" and "directly demonize" those who disagree with them as the Slashdot summary said. Dr. Mengele performed a lot of science, but how he did it was flat-out wrong, and I realize that those doing these experiments would never try to be like him. Still, I don't think we should call those who disagree with what he did "anti-science" and I disagree with the use of that phrase to exempt oneself from any ethical considerations while doing experiments, so that they might improperly silence any debate. Just because one disagrees with an arguement doesn't mean that it's stupid (although it certainly could be, one's disagreement with it is not proof of this).
Believe it or not, many people aren't against stem cells per se (let alone any other kind of science). They're against certain sources of them (abortion) and have absolutely no problem with adult stem cell research, even if they recognize the problems with the cells having different potential (merely multipotent, instead of pluripotent). Although, one might theorize that being able to use a person's own stem cells would be much more helpful than harvested ones, given that there are fewer potential rejection issues and that you don't want cells that are too able to differentiate--you want them to turn into whatever organ you're trying to regenerate, not some other random bodypart, similar to what happens in benign tumors like teratomas (the cell's ability to form a teratoma is one way to test that the cells are, in fact, pluripotent).
But that doesn't make people as easy to "demonize" so it's no wonder that people ignore such things when they're planning to run for office...
Humans have souls, Chimps don't have souls. It's easy to tell the difference.
Please educate us, how do we know we have souls, chimps don't have souls and why is this so easy to determine?
He picked George H. as his running mate only by circumstances that could be called blackmail. Now George W. in there trashing the republican party reputation. As far as gay marriage goes... what happened to the states rights tenet of republican beliefs? States rights are a CORE platform on the republican party. They can't change their platform based on particular circumstances.
There is no way you can say Reagan was liberal when talking about the role of science in life. It's almost like saying that GW Bush is as liberal as Clinton. Reagan was the first president to specifically present (or should I say represent?) creationism as a "scientifically sound theory". More deeply he started the campaign of "scientifically sound science", which is exactly what Bloomberg is correctly criticizing in his speech. As a reference, have a look at "the republican war on science" by Chris Mooney.
that is murder
right, like he said, abortion
if i'm not immortal, what's the point of living?
...te?
McCain has sold his soul to the neo-cons. He might've been somebody to respect once, but if you trust him for anything now, you're making just as big a mistake as voting for Dubya the second time.
What I don't understand is, why would you rather see embryos incinerated as medical waste, rather than used for research?
(Oh, and, to answer your first question: Embryonic stem cells can become all cell types of the body because they are pluripotent. Adult stem cells are generally limited to differentiating into different cell types of their tissue of origin. However, some evidence suggests that adult stem cell plasticity may exist, increasing the number of cell types a given adult stem cell can become.. (Source: NIH) As for your second question, it's being done, but sometimes you just can't use a mouse; ex. for treatment of diseases that do not occur or are difficult to study in animals.)
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.
I used to think highly of McCain. Not anymore though. He is toeing the line lately and has learned to shut up and sit down.
evil is as evil does
That's where the abuse of science occurred. I totally agree with you that given an accurate understanding of her medical condition, the question of how to proceed is an ethic and moral question.
However many, including Sen. Frist, deliberately obscurred an accurate understanding of her medical condition by continuing to promote the idea that she had higher brain functions and/or could someday recover from her condition. That is why she is one of the examples above.
In fact in that way all the examples are similar: given a scientific understanding of a set of facts, the question of what we should do next is a human question and therefore has moral and ethical implications to it. The problem is that certain groups deliberately attempt to mis-inform the public about the science certain situations, in order to affect the eventual decisions. That's manipulative and wrong, and in the end, ineffectual. You can fool the masses for a while, but you can't fool mother nature.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
the people who benefit from research are the people who need a treatment. Big pharma collectively makes a very large profit.
They make a profit as people need the treatments they produce (people seem to have deep pockets when faced with death and disease).
The current situation you've created is that the publicly funded scientists have handcuffs applied, that the private sector doesn't have to deal with.
Now assumign those without restraints are going to be more likely to find a profitable cure for something - then maybe (even if you don't like the idea of stem cell research) you might consider that you're not really getting the best bang for your buck - and in the future more likely to be lining the pockets of pharma - rather than receiving the treatment your tax-dollars funded.
No, abortion is the termination of a being that doesn't have a functioning nervous system. Once the fetus has a functional nervous system, at that point it's murder.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
On top of the sillyness I hope my parody has pointed out, you want us to believe that the Church has been pushing this sex-phobic agenda on people for almost 2 millenia in order to protect us against a disease that didn't exist yet! This is the most blatant example of the post hoc fallacy I've ever seen.
In light of this, I posit that the teaching against condoms is a good thing, to prevent the 'sexually expressive culture' from forming in the first place.
Hey - it's 1917, a great influenza pandemic is coming, and we have a treatment that prevents 17/20 people from catching it. But if we have everyone move out of the cities and keep their families on isolated farms, with little contact with their neighbors, we can prevent the whole thing! And as a side effect, it gets rid of those big cities that I don't like (but, of course, that's not my real reason for advocating this position, oh no, perish the thought!).
I'm sorry, no human society has been able to live under the behavioral prescriptions you describe. Trying to prevent people from using the best protection we have (more than enought to make the difference between a permenant epidemic and an one that dies out) is little different from advocating that the FDA shouldn't regulate pork products because eating pork violates your religious code and then ignoring the people that die as a result.
The Fed adjusted the money supply, not the prime rate back then.
And the prime rate only adjust one thing. Ask anyone who has bought a house. The mortgage rates never dropped as much as prime did, and when prime jumped way up, mortgage rates remained lower.
Interest rates were so high back then because the cost of living was going up rapidly (despite a lack of wage growth).
See below:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stagflation
This is the operative part:
Supply-side economics asserts that the contraction component of stagflation was caused by the inflation induced rise in real tax rates (see bracket creep). In addition certain states in the USA had laws against nominal interest rates being above a certain level and in the midst of inflation this forced real interest rates to be negative. In some places this caused a collapse in finance for business.
Reagan was a 100% supply-side guy (see the trickly-down theory). It became unprofitable for people to invest in the future due to negative real interest rates, partially due to the rate of return being knocked down by high taxes.
His tax cuts freed up a lot of money to invest in starting companies, and that's what happened. Perhaps it was more psycological than anything, or perhaps you even disbelieve it. There's room for both of those theories. But I believe it.
Maybe he was just in the right place at the right time, economically, I dunno. But presided over a long period of economic growth and prosperity and very low antagonism between the two political parties. It's tough not to like that, having lived through it.
I did feel his death was played for far too much Republican gain. Especially letting G.W.B give the eulogy, when they had nothing in common.
And now that you remind me, I am not thrilled about the death squads either. I kinda lumped that in with the wars, but in a way they're even worse.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Ah. Wise words from an anonymous coward!
The problem is that I'm not a socialist out of envy. When there are billions of people surviving on less than $US1 per day, and there are billionaires, there is clearly an issue. Do the billions of people in 3rd world countries suffer from 'envy'? Perhaps they do, and rightly so.
You say you choose greed. I believe you. It's people like you that the majority of the world would be better off without. You say that without accountability, the people get screwed. Well that's capitalism for you - capitalists enjoy all the rights and no responsibility. They are not responsbile for any of the troubles they cause. There is no such thing as accountability in capitalism - if the company is making a profit, that's as accountable as things get.
Even as a non-USian, I hope in the name of humanity that you be joking.
bullshit, you can't just make up arbitrary points at which killing someone is ok. it's murder after the organism begins existence as a complete human cell with 46 chromosomes
if i'm not immortal, what's the point of living?
...te?
Arguments for killing the fetus are stupid. You cannot try to guess when consciousness develops. Even if it were true that there is a single point where the fetus becomes conscious (which is probably not true), the burden of proof is on you. Just because something is in your body doesn't mean it is your body. You'd have an argument if it just crawled up inside you, but it's different when you put it there.
Logic is on my side. You're lucky that it's even legal. You want to kill a baby to keep you alive and have me pay for it? That's three times wrong.
Thanks for your post. IIRC, a few years ago some academics at the University of Chicago stumbled upon a correlation between the advent of abortion rights and a reduction in crime. That being said, what the world needs is a political philosopher that could open a path to compromise between the absolutist forces on either side of this issue. Personally, I'm "pro choice", but see no reason why a woman should need nine months to decide on motherhood. Drawing the line at the first or second trimester seems reasonable to me but how could such a principal actually become the law of the land given the vehemence of either side?
Every cell in my body is complete, human, and has 46 chromosomes, except for my few gametes.
In fact, with the right scientific techniques, any cell in my body could theoretically be used to create a new individuals. So, sorry, you are going to have to define some point at which killing something is okay, and you are going to have to do it based on a present functional capacity of some being, not its mere genetics.
And let me just say that if you've come to the conclusion that killing a zygote is evil but killing a slug is okay, then something has gone horribly wrong, and you need to start over again. You've missed the point of morality.
"Even if it were true that there is a single point where the fetus becomes conscious (which is probably not true), the burden of proof is on you."
Ok. The burden is trivially easy to prove when there is no nervous system in the first place. And even after there is, there's copious evidence that a fetus cannot feel pain until very late in its development.
Of course, most abortions at that point are because the fetus is brain-dead anyway. It always boggles my mind that people don't think about WHY partial-birth abortions involve collapsing the skull by vacuuming out fluid. Are doctors being pointlessly cruel? No: they do it in those cases because in those cases the fetus' head has swollen to many many times the normal size, crushing the brain, and delivering it normally is with such a huge hydrocephalitic head (which can be bigger that adult heads) physically impossible unless you do a C-section. So this brain dead baby is either coming out of the vagina somehow, or through surgery. Somehow, which hole in the body a brain-dead, unable to survive more than a few days, baby comes out is not really something I'd think we'd have to have a huge debate over. But apparently, for know-nothing Congress-critters, it is.
It came up when a Bush official gave an interview when he declared that there was no such thing as reality and that they decided what was true because they define history for the rest of us.
holy fucking shit when did i say anything about slugs? and you've completely missed the point, i'm saying it's not okay to kill humans, and the earliest point you can call something a human is when they first come into existence.
you can't just make up a point at which killing something is okay you psychopathic sicko. i wasn't basing it on genetics but at the point when a human first exists. if it's okay to kill something because you arbitrarily decide it's more stupid than you are, why hasn't someone killed you yet? i really hope someone fucking slits your throat you sick fuck
if i'm not immortal, what's the point of living?
...te?
"i'm saying it's not okay to kill humans, and the earliest point you can call something a human is when they first come into existence."
There is no point at which a human "comes into existence," when something non-genetically human becomes genetically human, when something not alive becomes alive. Reality isn't so discrete. So you are going to have to determine whether a PARTICULAR sort of thing that happens to have human genes is the sort of being its okay to kill or not. What sort of characteristics must it have to qualify? You can't avoid the question.
"holy fucking shit when did i say anything about slugs?"
You didn't: I pointed out that you seem to demand that we give more moral attention to something that does not even have the ability to feel or care or think and never has done: a slug has more capacity than a zygote. The fact that you care about the non-feeling one over the feeling one is a tell-tale sign that something has gone drastically wrong in your reasoning.
"you can't just make up a point at which killing something is okay you psychopathic sicko."
You're wrong. You are doing so, just as much as I am, and just as much as everyone must.
"i wasn't basing it on genetics"
Of course you were: your whole concept of what it means to be a human being is purely genetic, rather than having to do with any of the qualities ABOUT human beings that makes us think that we should respect their rights.
"but at the point when a human first exists."
I would say that I didn't exist until I at least had a brain. Nothing prior to that has any capacity to be "me." Individual cells without some sort of functional order are merely protoplasm with genetic code in them. They aren't people. They don't have feelings. Caring about whether they live or die is insane. They don't care. They never have. And by the time they are anything that can care, the original cells won't even be around anymore: they just started off the process that LED to the new being.
My skin cells are not separate people (even though they could be induced to grow into separate people under the right conditions, at which point we could say under your confused definition that they "began to exist" the second they formed). When I walk down the street, they die in the millions.
"if it's okay to kill something because you arbitrarily decide it's more stupid than you are, why hasn't someone killed you yet? i really hope someone fucking slits your throat you sick fuck"
It has nothing to do with intelligence: it has to do with functional capacity relevant to the moral rights we are thinking about. If something is cannot feel, then talking it being wrong to causing it pain is nonsensical. We have moral prohibtions against killing people for some very specific reasons relevant to what it means to BE a person and how killing them destroys that. Those reasons do not apply to clumps of cells with no nervous systems, no matter what their genetic makeup.
But what does Terri Shiavo have to do with being pro-science? It should be obvious what my feeling are about her final days, but that whole issue was an ethical one, not scientific. Lumping "quality of life" ethics that involves terminating unwanted pregnancies, terminally ill people, etc. together with being "pro-science" makes as much sense as declaring that the sun revolves around the earth!
I'm all for ethics in science, but lets be clear on what it means to be "pro-science". I issues with embrionic stem cell research, but I can understand why some people think my reservations "impede" science. However, end-of-life issues have nothing to do with being pro (or anti) science.
science is a religion
yes there is a point when a being comes into existence. it is when two gametes combine and form a whole. how do you not understand that? i didn't avoid the question, i already said that it's never ok to kill a human.
"The fact that you care about the non-feeling one over the feeling one "
again WHEN THE FUCK DID I SAY ANYTHING ABOUT A SLUG OR ANY OTHER ORGANISM YOU BRAINDEAD IDIOT? the fact that you can see it's wrong to kill a slug but not a human is a tell-tale sign that something has gone drastically wrong in your reasoning.
no i'm not creating an arbitrary point. i am pointing out a logical point that exist regardless of my thoughts
no i am using genetics simply to point out when an organism is created from it's parents, not basing it on genetics, only using them as proof of the living organism's uniqueness from its parents and therefore a unique existence.
just because you say you didn't exist doesn't somehow mean you didn't. what was that mass of cells before it had a brain? a toad? or maybe a rock? fuck you're an idiot. a skin cell is A FUCKING PART OF YOU, and as a part is not considered the whole. a zygote does not have parts, it IS THE WHOLE. i'm not saying a zygote is a human because it is a whole cell containing 46 chromosomes. i'm saying it's human because if you trace the origins of a human the zygote is the farthest you can go with it still being that human being.
another made up argument.. WHEN THE FUCK did i say anything about pain? either killing is wrong or it isn't. and how is intelligence different from "functional capacity". are you saying it's okay to just randomly kill a rabbit, or a dog?
no, some people have moral objections to killing because they find it wrong. others, like you i'm assuming, are just scared of dying and so try to agree with other scared people to not kill hoping that it will possibly prevent you from being randomly killed because you're so afraid of your own mortality that you don't want to have to think about it, and others fighting and killing each other with you being at risk would constantly remind you of it. see you're making an arbitrary destinction that includes you in the "un-killable" group. it's just like someone saying it's ok to kill jews because they're not really people, or blacks, because they're not really people. who says those things? people who aren't jews and people who aren't black. and yes i'm comparing you do the idiocy of racism.
but i can see no matter what i say you will not change your mind, and there is no fucking way you can convince me that killing babies is right so long as they're not "real people", so this conversation is all for naught
if i'm not immortal, what's the point of living?
...te?
OK, so it's worse than I thought. They've only heard about science in the big cities.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
Touche.
There is a US ban on funding for embryonic stem cell research.
Like many other people, I have no problem with adult stem cell therapy. Cloning and embryonic stem cell research are a related, but separate issue. Most of those who are against cloning and embrionic stem cell research and therapy have no issues with using adult stem cells for therapy. The sticking point in the stem cell debate is what one side defines as a piece of tissue (fit for any use under the sun), the other side defines as a person. Those that think of embryos as people find the use of embryonic stem cells as discusting as a hypothetical situtation where mentally disabled people are used as sources of organs for the more able-minded.
Unfortunately, those who phrase the stem cell debate sometimes ignore the opportunities that already exist for research, such as adult stem cells. They want to force a situtation which allows them to perform research that others equate with murder. So we are stuck with an argument between one group trying to prevent what they see as murder and another group that either believes it is not a person or that the value of one person is more than that of another.
The above paragraphs are factually correct, regardless of one's opinion on stem cell research. No matter what your feelings are on the subject, twisting the facts by ommitting words can significantly change the meaning of a sentence and make it factually incorrect. Once a person does that, they no longer have the facts on their side.
Most people working with embryonic stem cells are aware of problems such as tumours developing when they are injected into a patients and anti-rejection therapies that must be followed. Why not spend that same effort using a less-controversial source of stem cells? Some argue that we have an obligation to try every path that is open to us, but when we don't have enough resources to exhaust the paths we have, why do we need to travel down the more contentious paths?
science is a religion
"yes there is a point when a being comes into existence. it is when two gametes combine and form a whole. how do you not understand that?"
Because it doesn't make any sense. When two gametes combine, they form a cell. A cell is not a person.
"i didn't avoid the question, i already said that it's never ok to kill a human."
You seem to define "human" purely by genetics, rather than by function. That makes no moral sense whatsoever.
"The fact that you care about the non-feeling one over the feeling one "
again WHEN THE FUCK DID I SAY ANYTHING ABOUT A SLUG OR ANY OTHER ORGANISM YOU BRAINDEAD IDIOT?"
You seem completely unfamiliar with the concept of using examples in arguments. You need not have said anything about it for me to use it as an example. A slug has considerably more moral capacity than a human zygote, which has no nervous system whatosever. A human zygote is functionally equivalent to a skin cell.
"the fact that you can see it's wrong to kill a slug but not a human is a tell-tale sign that something has gone drastically wrong in your reasoning."
nope. You are saying that it's wrong to kill a cell with no nervous system. That's a pretty bizarre view. Simply calling the cell "human" is not an argument. We don't kill humans because of moral reasons that apply to people, not cells.
"no i am using genetics simply to point out when an organism is created from it's parents, not basing it on genetics, only using them as proof of the living organism's uniqueness from its parents and therefore a unique existence."
So it's okay to kill clones then? Or one of a pair of twins? Genetic uniqueness is as irrelevant as genetics itself.
"just because you say you didn't exist doesn't somehow mean you didn't."
But I didn't. Zygotes have no nervous systems. The idea that something without a nervous system is a person whose interests we should protect is absurd.
"what was that mass of cells before it had a brain?"
It was a mass of cells.
"a skin cell is A FUCKING PART OF YOU, and as a part is not considered the whole."
Saying fuck doesn't make lousy arguments stronger. Skin cells are no more or less part of me than any other cell: you can remove one and keep it alive: you can even, with current technology, grow it into a new person! I exist because of a particular conglomeration and functioning of billions of cells, not because of any one of them.
"a zygote does not have parts, it IS THE WHOLE."
The whole what? It's just some cells. Why is it wrong to kill cells? You kill millions of cells all the time. It's only "the whole" in an abstract sense of looking forwards in how it might develop under the right conditions. But it hasn't developed yet.
"i'm not saying a zygote is a human because it is a whole cell containing 46 chromosomes. i'm saying it's human because if you trace the origins of a human the zygote is the farthest you can go with it still being that human being."
Except its not that human being in any functional sense whatsoever. An ant is more like a human being than a zygote. A zygote is almost as different from a human being as something can possibly be and still be alive.
"another made up argument.. WHEN THE FUCK did i say anything about pain?"
It was an example. Perhaps if you stopped thinking that fuck is an argument, you'd realize the purpose of explames in argumentation.
"either killing is wrong or it isn't."
You're right. It's okay to kill cells, no matter what genetic code they have. It's wrong to kill things that have functioning nervous systems, feelings, concerns, awareness, etc.
Zygotes clearly unequivocally do not have any of those things. Saying we should protect them is pure madness.
"and how is intelligence different from "functional capacity". are you saying it's okay to just randomly kill a rabbit, or a dog?"
Nope. Such creatures have, at the very least SOME capacity to feel pain and care about th
Pain has nothing to do with it. Am I allowed to kill you as long as I give you some anesthetic first? Is it ok to kill something if it feels no pain, but then not ok if it feels pain for a fraction of a second before dying?
I think the development of consciousness is a continuous spectrum. You can't just pick an abstract point and say it's ok to end the life. What's the cutoff point? Your definition of human life is different and you can't prove that you're right. Neither can I. It is very unclear, I just prefer to be as prudent as possible. It's questionable that you should even be allowed to do it, but force me to pay for it? Do you really think you have the right to make me pay for something that I legitimately think is wrong?
I will say that I'm not completely sure about the ethics of stem cell research. I do think people on both sides want what is best for humanity. Abortion is what really irritates me. People want to enjoy sex without having to worry about the consequences. I think it's pretty disgusting that so many would rather kill the fetus than spend 9 months incubating it and giving it up for adoption.
Pain is an example of a moral capacity, not the only one.
"I think the development of consciousness is a continuous spectrum. You can't just pick an abstract point and say it's ok to end the life."
Well, in fact, yes you have to pick a point. Not abstractly, but for reasons.
However, that's irrelevant in regards to stem cells. There is no debate about the matter: stem cells do not have any sort of consciousness.
"Abortion is what really irritates me. People want to enjoy sex without having to worry about the consequences."
Is sounds like you just want to punish people who have sex you don't like. Abortion rates in countries with wide access to real birth control and sex education are much much lower than here in the US. If what we cared about was preventing abortion, then real sex education and contraception is clearly effective.
"I think it's pretty disgusting that so many would rather kill the fetus than spend 9 months incubating it and giving it up for adoption."
Easier to say than to do.
Ok, then what is the cutoff point? Pain has nothing to do with it. Please explain to me why the ability to feel pain should be criteria for having the right to live. "Deal with it." Yeah, great logic there. You can't vote to legalize murder. What has happened is that people have tried to pass things off as not murder by changing definitions. Do you really think you have the right to make everyone pay money for something when nearly half the population considers it murder? By the way, there are private roads and parks that you could can access at even lower costs than the taxes you pay. murder- premeditately ending human life The fetus is alive. The fetus is human. Abortion IS about carefree sex in the majority of cases! It is primarily a method of birth control. Under 10% of abortions are for rape, incest, health of the mother, and health of the baby. I fail to see why you couldn't wait a few weeks to find out.
Might makes right, don't you know? If you can make someone do something you believe is proper, should should do your best to force them to do it.
The less parasitic siamese twin gets choice. If they are evenly joined, then either can choose to have the surgery.
The baby, after birth, can be transferred to another care giver and no longer represents a burden on it's parent.
Blar.
Yes, we are a democracy. However, there are fundamental laws that cannot be changed by voting. Murder is one of them.
There are private campgrounds and such too. I cannot fathom a business NOT running a large park more efficiently. Their incentive would be to make money if they are a business, or maybe they'd just be a private orgainzation who does it simply because they want to. Even at state parks you usually pay for parking and such, it basically is run as a business, just not as well because they have no incentive.
There was another category marked "other" at about 4%. I guess if you wanted to be specific you could put your wife in "fear of embarrasment" and/or "insufficient funds to clean/replace panties"? You haven't told me enough about the situation to know anything about the outcome.
The pill is admitadly a moral conundrum. I doubt that I would call it murder, maybe manslaughter? It's difficult to say. It would depend on how often the pill causes fertilized eggs to fail to bond. I guess the more it causes this, the more wrong it is.
I'm really not a fundie, at least in the traditional sense. I reject Christianity and all other religions, but I do believe that all life is so incredible that we should have the utmost regard for it. Just in case you were curious.
Yes, I do consider the death penalty murder. War can be murder, but ideally it is self defense.
I wouldn't call it physically traumatizing, but nonetheless I was an ass and for that I apologize. If you know for sure that it wouldn't survive, then I guess I have no problem. In my defense, this wasn't made perfectly clear to me (and still hasn't exactly), but with words like "amorphous blob of tissue" and "tumor," I suppose I should take that as 0% survivability.
We could go on about Yosemite for a while if you'd like, but I'm not sure it's on topic. Like you said, I acknowledged we live in a democracy, but I think there are things we can't vote on.
Cheapen life by giving it simplistic definitions? So then are you cheapening life by saying it needs a brain compared to someone who holds even higher standards, such as the ability to speak? I can budge in certain situations. But I see no reason to budge for someone who just wants guaranteed birth control. As far as stem cells, I think more research needs to be done with what we have, find out exactly what we can do, and look further into adult stem cells. Four to six months is awfully high. The neural tube begins forming at 16 days, the brain at 27 days. By six weeks, the brain permits basic movement.