Slashdot Mirror
Stem Cells - The Hope and the Hype
zer0skill writes to mention a CNN summary of a Time cover story. The Truth about Stem Cells deals with an increasingly politicized area of scientific inquiry, and likens the fight to those over global warming and evolution. From the article: "Five years after Bush announced that federal money could go to researchers only working on embryonic stem cell lines that scientists had already developed, Democrats hope to leverage the issue as evidence that they represent the reality-based community, running against the theocrats. States from Connecticut to California have tried to step in with enough funding to keep the labs going and slow the exodus of U.S. talent to countries like Singapore, Britain and Taiwan."
That either 1) Embryonic stem cells are a source of oil
or
2) We are just going to use the "gay" embryos
I'll bet we could get Bush to sign on.
Amen. There is no constitutional authority. It is not "necessary" or "proper" to carry out any of the foregoing powers mentioned in Article I, section 8 of the Constitution.
Whether or not you think it is moral to fund stem cell research is your business and your state's. If 95% of the California population want to fund stem cell research for embryos, then let California. If 95% of Alabama's population thinks it is wrong and immoral, then they won't have to.
Don't force one group of people to pay for another's unconstitutional programs. It only will lead to more unrest.
the Political Inquirer
i really dont see the problem with this. i mean no other pres spent money on embrionic stem cell research, clinton, bush 1, etc.
Ah, so you have *just* bought into the propaganda. As a bioscientist I am here to tell you that stem cell research has been funded for at least two decades by several "Presidents" through the National Institutes of Health. It has not, until Bush been explicitly mentioned as a cost center giving Bush the appearance of "funding" stem cell research and the political cachet (read empty) of being able to say that he was the first.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
This is a mixed bag of controversies that are only being linked together because they are key issues for the Republican base. Evolution is a fact, like it or not; it is not the only subject on which the Bible is inconsistent, but it is one of the few "controversial" scientific theories for which we can say we have actually seen it in action. Global Warming, on the other hand - more precisely, anthropogenic global warming, for there is no question that the Earth has been getting warmer lately, the only question is why - is a highly politicized question on which I have heard some reputable scientists express doubts. I suspect that anthropogenic global warming is real, and potentially far more serious than the current consensus would suggest, but I can respect some of the scientists who question it. Embryonic stem cell research is not controversial because of the scientific claims made on its behalf - those are pretty clear - but because many people have very serious ethical concerns with using tissue derived from undeveloped human embryoes. Demonizing the opposition to embryonic stem cell research as "theocratic" is neither accurate nor constructive - there are even atheists who have ethical issues with the use of embryonic stem cells in research programs. Lumping them in together may help you with a small niche of voters who are sick of Republican self-righteousness but not sophisticated enough to recognize the differences between these issues, but I'm not sure who else it will help you with.
When President Bush veto'd the bill that was supported by both the House and the Senate that would have allowed for federal funding of embryonic stem cells (something that even the conservative Senate Majority Leader and would-be-Presidential hopeful Bill Frist-- who is a doctor supported), I put up a video on YouTube of Michael J. Fox (who has early onset Parkinson's disease, one of the several disorders doctors and medical scientists are now fairly sure that they can treat with embryonic stem cells, based on results from overseas) who was discussing the situation on ABC's Good Morning America the day before.
Apparently so many people thought the video was kind of moving, since Fox couldn't sit still in his chair and was thrashing about through the entire interview because his Parkinson's was so bad, that it made the front page of Digg.com. You can check out the video on YouTube here.
For the record, my grandfather died after a long struggle with Parkinson's earlier this year and I'm in favor of federal funding of embryonic stem cell research-- like more than 70 percent of Americans. The cells in question (some 400,000 of them) are being discarded en masse from in vitro fertilization labs anyways, so it's a choice between either letting them get thrown away-- or using them for research that could save lives.
The President says he thinks that ECS research constitutes the taking of a human life ("murder"). If that's true then why doesn't he work to outlaw all ECS research ("murder"), instead of letting it happen with private funding? He's caught between his own rhetoric and a hard place.
Well, a quick search on PubMed for "stem cell" reveals 156,585 papers and publications going back to 1966. The vast majority of those papers were published by US funded bioscientists who received federal funding from the National Institutes of Health for their work.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
The Preamble isn't law; it's an introduction. It gives some reasons for what's set out later in the document.
By your logic, the rest of the Constitution after that is redundant, because anything can be part of "general welfare". Obviously this isn't the case.
Bush's arguement for funding stem cell research that entirely uses stem cells from aborted fetuses was that it "leads to a slippery slope to purposely engaging in murder for scientific research." By that logic, we should also ban Harvard Medical School from researching with cadavers, for fear that allowing that will lead to people being stabbed in the face and dragged back to an imagined meat locker for scientific research.
I was watching C-SPAN 2, an American basic cable station that shows U.S. Senate debates live whenever the Senate is in session, and sure enough, Senator Tom Harkin likened Bush's actions to when the Pope banned scientific research on cadavers in the 1200s, calling it "unnatural," perhaps delaying human anatomical standing for hundreds of years until someone saw fit to violate the Pope's ruling, dig up a human body, slice it open, look through the muscle tissue, and write about it in a book...
What good thinking. In the same process, let all coast people not pay taxes for building roads and railways to inland. The point is, long term research is best supported by tax money because companies mostly seek short-term profits. But anyway, this article is not about science budgets.
This is clearly another battle between religion and science. For anyone who doesn't have all the facts on Bush's recent veto, they are quite simple:
intelligent, reasonable, people outlined a bill that would see leftover embryos from fertility clinics, that were going to be destroyed anyways because of a limited shelf-life, given to researchers. Furthermore, the bill outlined measures to ensure that the number of embryos being created would not be increased for scientific purposes.
Bush decided that it was a bad idea for "moral reasons," whatever the fuck that means. The embryos that this douche "saved" are all going to be destroyed anyways, we just won't see any scientific research come out of it, and so he has set back the clock on medical advancements that will one day save countless numbers of lives (though in the mean time, countless will die because of bush).
Bush either did what he did because he really felt the bill was wrong for his own personal religious reasons (which would have been hard had he actually read the bill, seeing as though the embryos are destroyed either way,) or he was pandering to his base. In either case, the prime motivator for his decision was religion -religion beat science this time, unfortunately.
I would also like to use this post to point out a number of ways in which the conservative media attempts to unethically further their agenda -including using biased language, misleading stories, and outright lies.
If this sort of crap is what passes for intelligent discourse, on a channel where people get their "news" and "information", is it any wonder that stupid decisions are being made, and shithead leaders get elected into power?
What I'm showing you above are not rare snippets from unpopular shows -admittedly, they are some of the more severe abuses of media power, but they are selected from among a great many such occurences, from some of the most popular American "news" people. The American population is constantly pelted with a barrage of bullshit and rhetoric. It's kind of hard to have faith in democracy under such conditions. Sure, the votes may be cast freely -but what about the months and years beforehand, when the voters should have been getting informed about current events? If that process is sufficiently disrupted, its no longer a democracy. How can you expect people to understand the issue properly, when they are constantly being fed the kind of bullshit demonstrated in the links above?
Embryonic stem cell research has never been funded through direct federal government grants and any indirect funding has not been affected during Bush's presidency.
:-)
This is simply just such an ignorant and factually incorrect statement that I don't even know where to begin..... As I responded to the other individual in this thread, stem cell research *and* embryonic stem cell research has been performed and funded directly by the federal government going back to 1963, possibly before. But the first published report in PubMed is in 1963. The Bush administration also made it impossible for any federally funded institution (read any university that receives *any* funding from the federal government) to keep any of those federal funds if they accept or perform any embryonic stem cell research with lines not explicitly approved by the administration. In other words, the types of institutions that would do the research are typically those that have the most to lose by performing the research under the Bush administration.
Given the recent discoveries regarding Woo Suk Hwang's research and what is known of adult stem cells, there is plenty of reason not to throw federal money at more research.
No doubt he was corrupt and a liar...... but we have those types in politics and all sorts of fields too. To judge an entire scientific community on the basis of one person's behavior is inappropriate. It would be like saying that because one person drove drunk or did illegal drugs, all US presidents are bad.
If embryonic stem cells were truly so promising, I would imagine that more companies would be pursuing them.
And they *are*. The problem is that they are doing it in other countries and there has been a significant brain drain from the US to those countries of scientists and their staff. These are high paying US jobs (and the resulting tax base) that have left the country.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Think of the reaction to the Copernican system, which after all was really just about a simplified model for calculating the position of planets. What difference does it really make to you whether the planets revolve around the Earth, or whether the planets and the Earth revolve around the Sun? None, unless your job is compiling almanacs.
But it's disconcerting to have your place in the universe moved.
A similar thing happened when the techniques of historical research began to be applied to the Bible. The only thing that changed was the idea of the historical process that created the Bible. It is no longer possible to view the Bible as a single unchanging thing that had a few corrupt offshoots. There is no way to trace the Bible back in its current form without concluding that it was pieced together and actively modified over the centuries after it's "authorship". Is there any reason to think this makes the Bible less true if you thought it true before?
But you have to give up part of your intellectual furniture to make room for this new idea.
Now we've reached points on several fronts of scientifc and technological advance that have larger practical day to day impacts on how we view ourselves than the Copernican revolution, and probably more so than Biblical "Higher Criticism".
For example: Are we just the product of a cascade of chemical reactions that can be reproduced in vitro? Do we have to look at the world as finite source of resources and sink for waste?
There are even ones that aren't on the public radar screen, like: Can machines be people? Certainly if somebody made a C-3PO or R2-D2, or even a program that passed the generalize Turing test, you'd have to consider this.
It's not surprising that liberals are more comfortable with this sort of thing than conservatives. It's not that liberals are more scientific, it's that conservatism believes that what is proven is best. But if you find out the world is not what you thought it was, or worse yet you aren't what you thought you were, then it throws old proofs into doubt.
If history is a guide, then the battle lines will be drawn again in the future, in a different place according to rules neither side envisions today. The thing is liberalism and conservatism are less ideologies than they are character traits.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I've noticed that one of the major arguments against the use of federal funding for embryonic stem cell research revolves around the fact that there is still the opportunity for private funding. Such opponents of stem cell research claim that, if there is so much promise in this area of science as many researchers have claimed, why hasn't there been significant breakthroughs or significant amounts of private funding? These individuals then go on to make a direct correlation between the potential of stem cell research and the lack of substantial private funding.
THE MAIN REASON we are not seeing enormous amounts of private money being thrown towards stell cell researchers is simple: we are still working on the BASIC SCIENCE. Science doesn't progress from initial discovery to therapeutics overnight. It takes decades of basic research to build a foundation upon which medical applications can be developed. You must understand how things "tick" before you can improve upon them. This is the reason why WE NEED FEDERAL FUNDING; Big Pharma doesn't want to invest in something that isn't going to pay off until decades down the road. These organizations wait for the government to front for the basic science, then they jump on a few years down the road saving millions of dollars in R&D. And do you blame them? Why spend more when you can spend less and have the same results? And, yes, I do realize that Big Pharma isn't the only source of private money.
Just my take on the situation. I am probably a bit biased, but I hate narrow-minded individuals that fail to see things from both sides of the fence.
Stem Cell science is being developed.
Whoever wins the race for patents and intellectual property, gets all the gold.
The only thing USA politicians can do is hurt American business. By banning science research, the jobs, the money, the workers, and all those profits go overseas.
The science will be developed, but what country will be on top?
Second place in Bioscience, Robotics, and Renewable Energy is not an option,
and yet every day the USA delays it's advancements, is another day closer to becoming a Left Behind third world country...
I teach HS gov't (among other things) and this has been an ongoing debate for, well, 220+ years. If you remember the FDR years, he tried to pack the court after they kept overturning his New Deal legislation. Ultimately, two justices retired, and he was able to put his people on the bench and get his programs past the courts. It was a sad day for true lovers of liberty. (Make no mistake, I applaus FDR for taking on the Nazis when few wanted to. But domestically...) There was a 1942 SCOTUS decision called Wickard v. Filburn which basically stretched the commerce clause to enormous proportions. It is oddly enough, under the guise of the commerce clause that the drug war is justified. The courts (not the people, though we have no problem with most of it) have granted the congress powers to do whatever it feels necessary. The elastic clause states that congress has the power to do all things necessary and proper to execute the "foregoing powers", in other words, those specifically listed under Art. I, Sect. 8. But...the days of limited gov't are over. What amazes me is that around here, all of those that decry the NSA wiretapping, Gitmo, loss of privcy, et al., have no problem with the gov't running health care, and all sorts of programs. Me? I'm a libertarian on msot things. I am opposed to the stem cell bill on libertarian grounds: i.e. the gov't is simply not authorized and should not get involved. Same thing with the NEA. I don't care if some guy wants to do research on stem cells or take photos of dude with things shoved up his ass. I just don't want the gov't involved in any sense, either saying what they can or can't do, nor spending a dime on it. But sadly, I'm in the vast minority. Most people, republicans and democrats alike, want the very same things. They want the gov't to effect their agenda, though the outcomes might be different, the means are the same. I disagree on means. The growth in power and influence of the gov't in our lives has increased tenfold the last few decades. There's precious little we can do.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/5229456.stm
Actually, I am more of a former finance student. The management piece was kind of a freebie that I thought might bode well for me in career advancement, but thank you for the interest. Since I am currently a senior engineer though, I hope you will give me a little more credit.
y #US_policy_debate.
Despite my disdain for it, wp seems roughly on target (albeit in typically biased fashion): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dickey_Amendment and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stem_cell_controvers
My only interest in this debate is that I don't like to see government funding for things like the NIH, NSF, or NEA for that matter. But since the money is going to by spent anyway, I would like it spent on something more promising than a pipe dream like embryonic stem cell-based cures. Frankly, there seem to be many more promising avenues of medical research, such as adult stem cell research (which is what I believe you are referring to with respect to Parkinson's and spinal cord repair).
There is an enormous amount of privately funded medical research in this country. I have to give your peers and their employers the benefit of the doubt and assume they are researching the most viable cures for diseases with the money they have. Just because countries like S. Korea want to dump government funding into embryonic stem cell research does not make that inclined to think we should by mimicking them. This is about lack of empirical evidence, not evil Christians or Republicans.
[By the way, government propping up industry is socialist, not capitalist. You can hardly apply capitalist economic principals to such things.]
There is absolutely nothing "religious" about the belief that personhood begins at conception (rather than any other point you want to put it). Indeed, the Bible says essentially nothing on the matter.
Do your homework and quit assuming. This is a battle between people who belief personhood begins at conception vs people who believe it begins at first brain wave, birth, the cutting of the umbilical cord, etc. None of these positions is necessarily any more "religious" than the other, and more importantly, none is any more "scientific" as well. "Personhood" is a moral concept and outside of the scope of science. Science can tell us that a blastocyst is alive and a human (according to the accepted definitions), but it cannot tell us if this is sufficient for the granting of rights.
This debate has nothing to do with science OR religion, let alone a conflict between them.
There is absolutely nothing "religious" about the belief that personhood begins at conception (rather than any other point you want to put it).
I disagree. It is overwhelmingly christians who support the "life begins at conception" idea, specifically because they believe that at conception a soul, a special divine spark of life, enters at precisely this moment. This claim is totally and utterly baseless, and should be thrown out immediately without consideration. While I am not a big fan of Christopher Hitchens, he hit the nail on the head when he said "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismisssed without evidence." Until we have some reason to believe that life (in a morally meaningful sense of the word) begins at conception, we should ignore people who say so. Some have argued that human life should be thought to start at conception through non-religious means, I think quite unsuccessfully, but you are free to peruse those arguments at your leisure. In any case, this is not even relevant, since the embryos in question were going to be destroyed regardless of bush's decision to veto the bill -they were slated for the trashbin.
I think you would do well to research other cultures opinions on when life begins. Depending on the religious scripts available, life begins either: just prior to conception, immediately after conception, a couple months after conception, or a couple months after the baby is born. The key factor involved is religion. It is not a coincidence that it is predominately christians holding this view.
None of these positions is necessarily any more "religious" than the other, and more importantly, none is any more "scientific" as well. "Personhood" is a moral concept and outside of the scope of science. Science can tell us that a blastocyst is alive and a human (according to the accepted definitions), but it cannot tell us if this is sufficient for the granting of rights.
I am among those people who believe that morality can be defined using the tools of rationality and science (yes, science.) I believe it fairly obvious that morality is intimately linked with the notions of consciousness and sentience. To the extent that this is true, it is obvious that science is critical in evaluating moral statements, since consciousness and sentience are within the domain of science. Questions such as "when does a life begin?", are subject to answers from science, since science is capable of telling us when something gains the status of a living being, according to the moral definition of "life", as provided by rational discourse.
This debate has nothing to do with science OR religion, let alone a conflict between them.
It has everything to do with science and religion. First of all, and downright trivially, science has been struck a blow, because scientists will be lacking valuable research materials. Secondly, scientists are arguing in favour of the stem cell research. Thirdly, it is religious types arguing against it. It can't get any more plain than that.
Indeed, the Bible says essentially nothing on the matter.
The bible isn't the arbiter of what christians believe -the church is. There is also VERY LITTLE in the bible about homosexuality, and yet you would think its the worst of all sins, judging by the churches reaction to it. If the church says something is the case, then that is what the christian faith teaches, by definition. You can bet your ass that if the christian church had been saying "the divine spark enters the body at 8 months after conception", then we would not be having this debate.
>There is absolutely nothing "religious" about the belief that personhood begins at conception (rather than any other
>point you want to put it). Indeed, the Bible says essentially nothing on the matter.
Just because the bible says nothing in particular on the matter (whether it says something in general via implication is up for debate), the Catechism of the Catholic Church *does* make statements on the matter, so it clearly is a "religious issue" for some people. Bush has made statements to indicate that it is part of his religious beliefs as well, not just his abstract morality independent of his religion. Religion != The Bible and Religion != Christianity.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
The Manhattan Project? The Moon Landing? Satellite technology? NORAD?
I don't know. I'm not sure which state would have stepped up to fund many of those.
I'm so utterly baffled at how so many people are complaining about paying taxes, how the government shouldn't fund the NIH, etc. What the NIH gets is somewhere in the low $20 billion per year range (I can't remember the latest numbers...), but the defense department gets around $420 billion, IIRC. The NIH is an investment in the US maintaining its position of economic dominance in the future, and it's a smart investment to make. And to say that private industry could play a similar role is simply not correct. Why isn't anyone complaining that we need to stop wasting money on the military instead?
Clearly, your outpouring of sarcasm there is intended to imply that, in reality, blastocysts are people, and to destroy them is murder.
Let's find out what you really believe.
You find yourself in a room containing a 3-month-old infant, and a cryogenically stabilized container holding 20,000 blastocysts. The room is on fire. You have time to save either the infant or the 20,000 blastocysts. Which do you save?
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt