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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."
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.