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2009 US Budget Holds Mixed News For Science
sciencehabit writes "ScienceNOW has the details on the impacts of President Bush's appropriation request — bad news for biomedicine, better news for the physical sciences. Some agencies really get slammed and many projects are jeopardized. The Bush administration's theory is that a 5-year run-up in National Institutes of Health funding, which ended in 2003, left the federal funding picture seriously unbalanced. Each year since then the administration's budget request for science has moved to shift the balance. Biomedical researchers are expected to lobby hard in Congress for relief. The NYTimes notes that prognosticators expect Congress not to act on a budget until the next President arrives, betting on it being a Democrat. "
You get to actually go to the moon and spend a few months there. Except you will catch cancer from the cosmic rays and you will die a horrible painful death.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
What's "mixed" about earmarks for the Creation Science Institute?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Science has been bad news for Bush's agenda.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I rarely respond to trolls, but...what the hell is that ASCII art supposed to be?
Living With a Nerd
Meanwhile, it didn't do it any long-term favors to biomedical research, as the NIH and university leaderships handled their huge influx of money about as well as Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan did with theirs. There are dozens of universities with new buildings they were planning to pay off with NIH overhead, that are now completely screwed.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Bush is anti-children! Would someone please think of the children and fund science!!
That'll shame him and Congress into getting more money!
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
Actually, the major research centers didn't even see a penny's worth of an increase. Instead, much of the NIH funding was diverted to arcane projects at unknown colleges, and earmarked for things like research into efficacy of remote prayer... or studies into the effectiveness of abstinence, as a method of HIV prevention.
After all, it's not like scientific research for anything other than bona fide military purposes is the proper role of government anyway.
"Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"
The bad news for science is where there IS funding. Science should be independent of government as much as possible.
and his cadre of theocrats that the heliocentric earth is an abomination in the eyes of god, an affront to the rightful god-created geocentric universe. that's why the physical sciences didn't get as shafted
poor biomedicine. we all know that messing with the building blocks of life is the devil's work, but still
maybe if someone told the theocrats that the god-given holy oil, currently unjustly in the hands of the heathen mohammedeans on the arabian peninsula, was an act of god as manifested in billion, i mean er, million, i mean er, six thousand year old organic matter. and that biological research might someday free the god-given holy oil to its rightful ownership by christian nations through artificially made, i mean er, as manifested by god working through the hands of biological researchers. then maybe they will support more biological research
amen
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Science has been bad news for Bush's agenda.
Bush has spent more on science than any other President in the history of the United States, so to say that he is anti-science is sharply distortionary.
This is my sig.
Example: Biotech company developes two new treatments for diabetes. One is administered daily in pill form and costs $10 a pill to make but can be sold at $100 a pill comercially. The other is a one time treatment that would cost $200, most of which would go to the doctors performing the procedure.
Quiz: Which do you think will be released to the public?
For the record, biotech companies are not all evil, all the time. They have done great things and not always just for the bottom line. But to have no public funding for public medical research seams extremely dangerous to me.
Bullshit. If the private market's so frigging great, how come we don't have a cure for lung cancer? If I ran a multi-billion tobacco company, I'd definitely want to find a way of keeping my customers, not killing them.
I'll agree government isn't necessarily the answer either, but I see that as more of a problem with your government than government in general.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
The NYTimes notes that prognosticators expect Congress not to act on a budget until the next President arrives, betting on it being a Democrat.
While the Democratically-controlled Congress may indeed delay approving a budget, I'm sure they know that the next election could just as easily put another Republican in the White House -- and that their razor-thin majority (especially in the Senate) could be lost as well, depending on the R-side coattails.
I think the goal is to not act on the budget until the next President arrives, betting on it not being an Idiot.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
First pass at the budget is ALWAYS ignored.
The parties are working up their versions of a budget and waiting for the elections to play out. In the meantime, they'll temporarily fund the government.
For those hawks that believe that private industry can do research "better" I offer the following.
1. Some research is so basic that there's no near-term mass-market application.
2. If the research can't become a profit center, it's dropped. This is already happening in the now-privatized University R&D and it happened long, long ago in business.
3. Most countries have some kind of nationalized R&D AND economic planning to sell the R&D. This model appears gets about the same results as the looser American style.
4. Corporate R&D is mostly stealing ideas from someone else who cannot afford litigation.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
What kind of argument is that? We don't have time machines either, the philosophy of capitalism is not at fault.
My counter-argument would be that free-market capitalism has a better chance of discovering a cure for cancer than a government.
So our answer? Give the corporations researching these cures tax rebates.
- cut the tax cuts.
- cut the security spending.
- allow a massive deficit.
- cut none security spending.
To roll back a number of the tax cuts will be un-popular, and may be pointed to as putting us in a massive recession (though it is obviously coming regardless of what is done).The military spending really is needed. The republicans have been gutting the DOD and DARPA. The pubs pointed fingers at Clinton for undercutting DOD, but DOD was in far better shape in 2000, then it is today. And DARPA was re-tasked by the white house into spending on items for TODAY. IOW, they gutted research for tomorrow's needs (that is probably the single worse decision that W. has made in his 8 years; it may well start a hot war with china, since they may achieve close enough tech parity to us to go after taiwan; we will have no choice but to either allow Taiwan to be be taken or for us to use small nukes/biological/chemicals).
The deficit is probably what will happen, but that will impact America for decades to come. Of course the deficit will not be
Yes, I can now see that the pubs have laid a clever trap for the dems and America. Do we allow it? I suspect that when the cuts come from this budget, the pubs will attack the dems, and Americans will buy this garbage. IOW, we will put back into office more pubs and will see the deficits be blown up further esp. if romney makes it (another neo-con like W.).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If you had said "Applied Technology and product research should be cut entirely", I'd agree with you. But the private sector already pays the vast majority of that. Further, private industry already pays for a 2/3 majority of all R&D research in the United States: http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/guitotal.htm As you can see from the graphs, that fraction has been increasing every year, (in real dollar terms!) since the early 1970s. Clearly, private industry DOES see many areas where funding large R&D programs brings it a competitive advantage.
But this does not in any way support the contention that government funded "scientific research" should be cut entirely. There are many areas of research whose outcomes are so uncertain that it doesn't make any sense for private enterprise to finance them, but where the net economic and social benefits are very long term and very positive. Consider research on the germ theory or disease, or the discovery of the electron. Together, those fields for the bedrock of all modern economies. Space exploration and fusion power research are two modern examples where the fundamental research could not possibly be supported directly by private enterprise without governmental assistance. There are other areas related specifically to government responsibilities (defense, law enforcement, environmental stewardship, etc.) where I would expect the government to provide funding. Finally, there are a number of research areas with a large societal benefit, but little to no profit or market advantage, where private actors shouldn't be expected to fill. The modern archetype is vaccine research.
I'm as big a fan of the free market and constitutional restrictions on government action as the next guy, but I still accept that there are areas that there are things, like government funding of fundamental research, that would not be supported but for government intervention.
They are able to deduct the R&D costs directly.
Government research is needed for the diseases that are rare and therefore wouldn't be profitable for a corp to R&D medication for it - even with the deductions factored in. I can understand your point and agree with much of it. Either way, you either have politicized R&D with the Government or profit motivated corporate research. Both aren't perfect by themselves but together they can cover much more ground than if there was only one research funding avenue.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
It spells out "gnaa" if you view it using a monospace font.
-Esme
It is true that Bush does not make policy decisions based on scientific research and it is true that some of his personal beliefs run counter to current scientific understanding. This has impacted what science gets funded (as many ex-pat stem cell researchers now in Singapore would tell you).
However, Bush has budgeted to give science in general quite a bit more funding than what Congress has been willing to sign. He proposed large increases last year, which got cut by Congress & his proposed increases in the physical science this year are actually quite good. (Good enough that surely some think that it isn't fiscally conservative.)
I'm personally writing my representatives in Congress asking them to not slash the proposed increases as they have done in the past.
I can't help but think that leaving NASA in something of a funding "holding pattern" helps to limit the planetary observation that they were chastised for shorting, leading to less evidence on silly politically charged topics like global warming, greenhouse gases, and air pollution.
Perhaps you know of a few dozen exceptions?
F&A money usually runs about 1/3 of the total grant, but is immediately split up between the researcher's department, college, and university (and even the researcher gets a slice back, laundered of its spending restrictions). Not all of those parties want to spend their slice on a new building; in fact most of it goes toward operating expenses and (relatively) small purchases that are not in their institutional budget. Trying to squeeze $10MM out of it would seriously cramp their style.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
This is a lame duck president. Congress will wait for a new president before doing anything. Before the budget will get passed there will be at least one continuing resolution where funding will be at the current very low levels across the board for science. Then Congress, realizing it needs to deal with the ballooning budget problems, will need to pass a lean budget for science in order to fund things like welfare. Only NASA will be largely spared since it is so spread-out over many Congressional districts.
There is no hope for science funding in the emergency stimulus bill and only a little hope for a April/May supplemental appropriations bill tacked onto war spending. So there will be a long time at 2008 levels of funding and then cuts and basically level funding for the rest in the eventual 2009 budget passed by Congress and signed by the then president.
Don't believe me, read what the Director of Fermilab thinks:
http://www.fnal.gov/pub/today/archive_2008/today08-02-05.html
The only real hope for science funding is through universities really. If you know any university trustees, let them know about the problems. If these wealthy and well connected people feel that their companies are at risk due to the US trailing in science, then they can make an impact with Representative and Senators. We need more people like Craig Barrett, the chairman of Intel, expressing why science funding is key.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/20/EDFDUHP1I.DTL
Plus if you take that logic (Private Corporations should fund all Research) eventually what you end up with is corporations approaching the size of our government funding the same thing or it not happening at all. Theres simply nowhere else to get such giant amounts of money from.
"The NYTimes notes that prognosticators expect Congress not to act on a budget until the next President arrives, betting on it being a Democrat."
And it's been this way for years. The President proposes a budget, and Congress promptly throws it all away. Why does the Whitehouse - in ANY administration - bother?
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Well, I suppose if your example drug company wanted to let the competition eat its lunch, it would release the $100 pill. Most companies don't want to do that.
You might be thinking they'd use patents to prevent the competition from releasing the better cure. Problem is, that requires them to put on the public record the fact that they're holding back a better, cheaper treatment. Any company doing this would get killed on PR alone. Do you know how much money pharma companies dump into "philanthropic" programs just to deal with the PR implications of the way they do business today? Multiply that by the thousandfold hit they'd take trying what you suggest, and you have a pretty good going-out-of-business plan.
Perhaps you think all the drugmakers would collude to suppress the better solution. Of course, that kind of activity would be highly illegal. Not too easy to hide, either. It only takes one company that feels it isn't getting its share of the profits, and the gig's up. (You may not know all of their names, but there are a lot of drug companies out there.) Which means a lot of trouble to divide profits up among a lot of players; not a good idea. Hell, even if you keep everyone's shareholders happy, a single whistle-blower can ruin your whole day. Before too long, a company trying this would get killed twice -- once on PR, and once in anti-trust lawsuits.
All that, of course, assumes the particular pairing of treatments you describe would come about in a single drug-maker's pipeline in a relatively narrow time window without a bunch of intermediate steps. That's not a very likely scenario. One of the factors that makes it unlikely is the fact that no one party (or group of parties with united interests) controls the entire drug R&D pipeline -- a fact which becomes less true as the government exerts more direct control over the research. (And that's what funding really is -- control.)
In short, fears like the one you express are common because most people have a shortage of insight about the drug industry and an excess of paranoia about corporations and/or health care.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I'm sorry...it's just that...well...Timecop kinda sucked...and...well...maybe you should worship someone else?
You know...like the fonz?
http://digilander.libero.it/spaziowebceskino/img/griffin.png
I mean...Peter Griffin completely had it right. Timecop? What the hell were you thinking?
Living With a Nerd
It is very good for the physical sciences (with double-digit percentage increases to many agencies).
The news is not all that good. What you have to remember is that this 17% is coming on top of a cut in 2008 so the net increase is far smaller. Not only that but the effects of the cut this year were greatly magnified because they were retroactively made 3 months into the financial year! Hence some of the money which was cut had already been spent and, since it could not be retroactively reclaimed, resulted in far greater damage to the programs.
That being said I'm sure my american colleagues will be happy with this but, since it was the US parliament which butchered the budget this year I don't think they'll be celebrating until it actually gets enacted.
No money for biology and other "iffy" sciences like meteorology, lots of money for geologists to find proof that the oldest rock on earth is 5999 years old.
Time and time again examples of ethical dilemmas like this are brought forward without specific examples behind them. If there is a treatment which is known to work, someone will release it to the public, even if it means making less long term because if it is superior, the first company to do it will make more money than their competitors, and eliminate the market for the non-cure drugs. (People bring this same sort of example out for cars, without contemplating why Honda and Toyota came to have the market share that they have today.)
That said, I would be interested in hearing actual examples of this dilemma occurring, but to my knowledge it hasn't happened. (I do academic research in medically relevant fields, so I'm reasonably conversant with the extant pharmacopoeia.)
http://www.donarmstrong.com
20% hikes for math and physical sciences, engineering and computer science.
Sounds good to me.
There should be no government spending on scientific research at all - and no government prohibitions on research (eg stem cell research).
1) There are no government prohibitions on stem cell research that I'm aware of. There's only a prohibition on using Federal money to do such research. If you want to finance it, you're still free to do so.
2) Government spending on research allows a lot of things which otherwise simply would not happen. The space program, for instance, wouldn't have even happened if it weren't for government spending, as private companies don't have that kind of money, and won't invest in something with a 50- or 100-year payout (or "TTM" as they call it now: Time To Money). Of course, there's a valid argument that taxpayers shouldn't be forced to fund things they don't want, and not everyone wants particle accelerators or space research or medical research, but if you want your nation to have a prosperous economy based on technology, then you have to do something to push technology more than other nations. Private companies won't do the basic research because the TTM is too long; this is a flaw with the whole capitalist system. Now, if you'd prefer the USA to become a 3rd-world backwater, while China surges to become the world's leading economy and technological powerhouse, that's ok for you to think that, but at least be honest about it. I, for one, believe that while government should be limited, and that our government wastes far too much money on things like military adventurism overseas, one of the valid roles of government in this modern age is to facilitate things which private companies and individuals would never do on their own because it's simply too difficult and costly for them, but which are important to us as a society.
This is "Flamebait"? Next time, try a little research before you reach for that button, mods. Here, let me start you off:
http://oversight.house.gov/investigations.asp?Issue=Politics+and+Science
http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2007/02/72672
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/03/17/60minutes/main1415985.shtml
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/08/politics/08climate.html
SIERRA TANGO FOXTROT UNIFORM
Maybe, but can government really afford to be as independent of science as possible?
Government is, ideally, about decision-making and allocation of resources. Therefore, the government has (or at least should have) a very strong vested interest in making educated decisions and allocating its limited resources as smartly as possible, in order to get the most bang for its buck and not lead the country into any silly pitfalls like health crises or dubiously justified wars.
What we have instead currently is a system so politically charged the repulsing forces are close to tearing it apart. It invests its resources in carefully selected areas which agree a priori with its beliefs, and throttles any research that turns up results that fly in the face of those beliefs. The beliefs are themselves not the problem, it's the slavish devotion to them, and their preference over any facts, where the trouble starts.
Let's put it this way: If it were a single person, cherry-picking things he reads or hears for facts that agree with the way his mind is already made up, and then making decisions based on those beliefs, most people would call him a "flatulating butthead."
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
It's not so much a question of if it's happened before as much as it is a question of if it could happen in the future. I'm not necissarily saying that there are two fully developed drugs sitting side by side, but perhaps one avenue of research gets more funding than the other, or more prominant researchers.
Probably the closest examples that I can think of are probably more along the lines of the effectiveness of drugs. We've been giving our sick children infant cough syrup for years while just recently publicly funded research found that it was not only innefective but quite possibly dangerous as well.
I am not a pharmiciutical hating Nazi for the record. I have comments in support of the Biotech firms on several slashdot pages. Like I said, they've done great things (Merck's campaign to eleminate river blindness comes to mind), but it seems like this is one area that public founds could be used to form a safety net and encourage research in directions that aren't necissarily profitable.
I realize this has a fairly small chance of actually being passed, what with Bush being a lame-duck president and most spending increases most likely going to an "economic stimulus package" and worthy causes like bailing out real-estate and bond speculators, but it would be pretty good for computer science research, especially the sort of basic research that DARPA doesn't fund (DARPA funds mainly short-term, deployment-focused R&D).
The "20% hikes for math and physical sciences, engineering, and computer sciences" is the main highlight, since NSF funding for computer science has been declining for the past few years. In addition, "a 25% increase in the number of graduate research fellowships" will free up money for professors to spend what grant money they do get on actual research instead of on paying grad-students' tuition and stipends. I may also help to increase the attractiveness of CS/engineering/science graduate school for U.S. students, among whom enrollments have been declining hugely (it's not a huge carrot, but an NSF fellowship pays $30k/year, versus the usual ~$18-22k grad-student stipend, so is substantially more attractive).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
"NIH Grantees Win 2007 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine"
"NIH Grantees Win 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine"
"NIH Grantees Win..." Oh heck, this is getting boring. Let me just quote:
"Of the 81 American Nobel laureates in physiology or medicine since 1945, 62 either worked at or were funded by the NIH before winning the prize."
(source)
"The Constitution does not give the authority to the U.S. to do things that are in the USA's best interest, but only those things which the Constitution specifically allows the U.S. to do (Tenth Amendment)."
Um, actually that's not right, as the Constitution does, in fact, give authority to act in the USA's best interest. And the "specifically allows" argument is wrong too. It's something people trot out when things like this get discussed, but it isn't true and really never has been.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Welfare_Clause
"The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States"
Now, SPECIFICALLY what is the "general Welfare" and how can the US go about providing for it?
Now you see why that argument doesn't work.
Yeah, this an example of why it's imperative to have funding for research in non-pharmaceutical affiliated laboratories in public universities doing basic research and verifying that what is being claimed to be the case by drug companies is actually the case in long term studies.
Plus, higher funding rates for the NIH will make sure that I'm kept in cheeseburgers.
http://www.donarmstrong.com
First off, I heavily disagree with you, but still don't think you warrant the troll mod. You have an opinion, and aren't trolling (perhaps).
What about science for the sake of knowledge? Finding life, say, on Europa will probably have no economic benefits whatsoever, but would benefit humanity as a whole. The same goes for other just-because lines of research, like SETI, which will probably never have a practical application, but still is just neat. The same goes for most of experimental physics, most of which isn't not geared towards any marketable solution. I rather doubt that the Higgs boson will be making anyone rich (discounting the Nobel winnings) in my, or my grand kids lifetime.
Then you have the discoveries that have no short-term benefits, like heliocentrism which only came in handy 600 years after its discovery, capitalism is far to shortsighted to support things that only MAY become useful in a couple generations.
My problem with rabid capitalists is that they seem to think that everything worthwhile must involve profit. Life is more than money, sometimes the satisfaction of having your worldview expand is worth far more than any amount of money shoved at it, or made from it (Darwin, Copernicus, Newton, Einstein, etc... all of whom were involved with publicly funded institutions). Even if no profit was made from the discovery of extraterrestrial life, it still would change the shape of human knowledge FOREVER, a much more important achievement than simple cash.
Also, to dispell another popular, and obnoxious, myth: science != technology. They are related, by not equivalent.
Also, on a more subjective level, I disagree with national defense. We have too much of it already. It is far too big a money sink for its worth. Put it towards education and acting civil to our neighbors (in this day and age that means the world in general), and we won't need to spend trillions on finding a better way to kill people (what an odd proposition to begin with).
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Indeed, I am the only one here who has provided any evidence. You've provided none at all. So I am not sure who you think you're fooling.
Example: Biotech company developes two new treatments for diabetes. One is administered daily in pill form and costs $10 a pill to make but can be sold at $100 a pill comercially. The other is a one time treatment that would cost $200, most of which would go to the doctors performing the procedure.
This is total conspiracy theory bullshit. Do you honestly think that a true cure would only sell for 2 times the amount of a treatment regimen? Markets don't work that way.
A cure is always worth more than a treatment regimen - how much more? Whatever the market will bear. If your treatment regimen costs $100, you can bet the cure will cost $100,000. Drug companies would price the cure so they make money. Thanks to insurance companies footing the bill, they will get every dollar of that amount while the cure is under patent protection.
-ted
Why does everyone expect the government to pay for everything?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
I don't understand those who think science funding is a liberal cause.
The federal government funds basic scientific research so that companies don't have to. Economically, this has been a tremendously successful strategy, which is now being copied world wide. The way scientific funding is allocated is rather ingenious. Hundreds of proposals are sent in to the big three granting agencies (NIH, NSF and DOE), and are then re-distributed to past grant winners for evaluation. Only the best are selected. In biology around 10% are funded, in physical science around 5%. If you can't come up with something good and economical, no money. The competition for federal funding thus forces scientists to work hard, be creative and be frugal (much like the free market). There is no way corporate labs can compete with this system in basic research, because there are just so many ideas out there, and no way to know for sure which ones will work. There's simply too much risk in basic research. Plus a scientist who is happy to make $40K to $50 off of grants expects twice that in a corporate environment (because we don't like to wear suits, or something like that). The large corporate basic science labs have thus been driven out of business. Corporations and investors are free to select only the successful projects and people, without having to be weighed down by the failures.
Now, we could stop doing this, but that wouldn't mean corporations would start funding basic research again. Europe and China now use a similar system, so we would simply be putting US businesses at a disadvantage.
The current Democratically led Congress did not understand this, and cut science funding levels from what Bush had requested (wrap your mind around that for a second). They probably expected some feeble complaints from academics and were very surprised when they started hearing from big business (meaning donors).
This is one thing the government does pretty well. There is a good system set up, with minimal political interference (unlike NASA), healthy competition, and tangible economic results. It could be better, but it is hardly a liberal financial black hole.
We may be using the wrong metric - money spent and patents issued instead of measuring research effort.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/318/5852/913b
Speaking Out About U.S. Science Output
I was amazed by J. Mervis's News of the Week story "U.S. output flattens, and NSF wonders why" (3 August, p. 582). Not by the conclusion that U.S. science productivity is flattening out, but because apparently nobody interviewed by the NSF could identify the reason. Had the question been posed of almost any working scientist I know, the simple and accurate answer would have been that the number of papers that are written is diminishing because scientists are able to spend less time writing papers! Instead, we spend ever-more time on the increasingly burdensome administrative requirements of conducting science legally, and on writing, rewriting, and re-rewriting grant applications as the NIH's pay line drops to catastrophically low levels. As the number of hours in a day is finite and unchanging, something has to give. If I didn't have to spend the rest of this month ignoring various half-complete manuscripts and rewriting a grant application, I'd be able to explain in more detail.
John P. Moore
Department of Microbiology and Immunology
Weill Medical College
Cornell University
New York, NY 10065, USA
I wish I were old enough to put "Computer" on my resume.
How do I figure, I figure because it was on the news, being reported by mainstream media, talked about by candidates and so on. The reason for denying embryonic stem cell research funding is the same as right to life anti abortion arguments, it kills life. That is one of the most decisive political issues out there and and has been well established.
And you point is what exactly? People rationalize things however they want. Someone saying they don't want to murder or kill innocent life might not see war as innocent. But it doesn't matter to me. I never said I was prowar and anti stem cell. People are, and you will probably find a lot of people who don't support embryonic stem cell research with their tax dollars who also don't support war.
I would assume that people who are against embryonic stem cell research funding with their tax dollars are also against abortions and vitro fertilization when they claim to be against killing innocent life. I personally object to it because of how close it is to raising people just to haves parts form them in the name of helping others. It would suck 200 years from now to find out that your new born baby is going to be harvested in order to provide a healthy heart for your 140 year old grandpa and no body thinks twice about it. There is a movie called the island or something along those lines that you should take a look at. it deals with growing cloned humans to support existing humans.
But as far as I am concerned, there is nothing stopping you from using those eggs. feel free, just don't ask me to give you money for it and don't force me to give money to the government so they can give it to you. If you get it on your own, more power to you.
There was funding of science well before the government got involved with it. A good majority of the science that made the world as we know it today was funded by sources other then the government. I think what you mean to say is that it is much easier to get funding from someone who doesn't have a financial risk involved and will expect a return on the investment. After all, endowment grants are limited and all. I personally believe that any government funded science should share royalty free, any discoveries made with the rest of the country. You can charge other countries but Americans should have free access to the information whether it is copyrighted, patented, trademarked or somehow protected otherwise. I also believe that any government funded science should be only reviewed in journals that are free to the public in which anyone can access.
I'm not against funding science, I am against the idea that everything will grind to a halt and turn upside down if the government isn't behind it all.
How do I figure, I figure because it was on the news, being reported by mainstream media, talked about by candidates and so on. The reason for denying embryonic stem cell research funding is the same as right to life anti abortion arguments, it kills life. That is one of the most decisive political issues out there and and has been well established.
Well, let's cut to the reality though. Stem cell research is a side show issue because both parties have pretty much the same position on all the really major issues. The war will continue for some indefinite period, the USA will continue to have a military larger than its top 5 rivals combined, the federal government will run along at roughly 20% of GDP and free trade will be the norm and that's that. No matter who wins the next election, supposedly liberal Obama or Clinton, or supposed conservative McCain or Romney, or even, gasp if Dick Cheney ran and won or Al Gore, those fundamentals will not change.
So we're left to arguing over crap when we really need to have a national debate over some basic economic fundamentals as was the case in 1980.
This is my sig.
I don't think anyone who has put serious thought into it wants the war to just end arbitrarily, The dems backed off the immediate pullout stand because it looks like they might get into office and be the ones responsible for the after math of such a foolish decision. We should continue to have a large military for the simple reason of that last few wars we were dragged into, not started ourselves, the military we faced were comparable larger then what we see in the US today. But besides this, our large military suppresses the urges to goto war when our economy is down. It used to be that the easiest way to pull out of a recession was to create a war and kill off a portion of the population greater then what is demanding the Feds to take care of. This seems to be true in about any economy and at the risk of evoking Godwin's law, it was true with Germany coming out of WW1 and into the development of WW2. As for free trade, Well, I have mixed feeling about this. A true free trade would be where the economy and living conditions matched the countries involved. Paying technical workers in India $80 a month as a living wage compared to $80 a half day in the US lop sides the trade and doesn't really give the free part the recognition it deserves. Unfortunately, this lopsidedness seems to bring their standard to our but it has the effect of devaluing our currency in the process which removes the advantages of free trade as it is currently seen.
All of which, for the various reasons given, I think should remina existing and most others believe the same for similar reasons.Well, there is a difference in approach. Think of it like you are drowning. A republican would run to the neares boat, take the life preverer and throw it attached to a rope that is 50 feet shorter then the distance you are out and tell you to swim to it and you will be saved. A democrat seems to want to throw the life preserver in your general direction and if it is 50 feet further out then you, they just want to got another boat, grab their and throw another and another until they eventually hits you. Both want to save you, and it is hard to tell the difference between a democrat and a republican with 8 years of Bush in office but the basic differences are if you want to do a little work yourself to reach the aid or if you want to wait until they finally get it right. The difference could mean how long your in the water, or whatever undesirable condition your in, and how much or how often they take from others in the process. So in a generic sense, yes, they are all the same, but in a practical sense, they are different.I agree. But I fear the answers to the debate won't have a popular outcome. Just like in the 80's. But at least with it on the table, people could see and understand some of the though processes behind the situations we are in and hopefully have constructive criticisms that could develop into novel answers or solutions to some of the problems we face without creating new ones or unfairly targeting the most productive members of society.
How do we 'humans stand a chance?'
We, humans, aren't limited to chance at all, we can also apply
knowledge and purpose. After all, we've had the roots/nuts/berries
fuel thing nailed down for millennia, and the sun never HAS burned
those.
We were also first with fission energy, and with less time 'spent' on
the problem than old Sol has had...
Best activation energy for fusion is deuterium-tritium, by the way, and
solar output is straight proton-proton (which is much harder).
Americans and americans who vote, more specifically vote for republicans, are different people and different subsets of people. If you must bring this up, at least keep it into the context of the statement which was in reply to why the people who vote for republicans support a certain issue.
I never said it didn't. I explained the reasoning behind why people feel the way they do. Don't mistake bringing information to the table for supporting it. But you know what, Saying they will be destroyed anyways is similar to saying we should go ahead and use murder victims or terminally ill people for freakish scientific experiments because they would just be destroyed any ways. It doesn't make as much sense when stretched into that light. But I would imagine that a lot of these same people see it that way. I already stated my opposition is because I don't want to see people artificially grown just to be killed later and have their organs harvested for rich people who are now an identical genetic match. That has more to do with cloning then stem cells but it falls within the same scope as far as I am concerned when you are creating or growing human life to destroy it for whatever benefit. We have been able to create embryonic stem cells from non embryonic cells with a great deal of success. I'm not even sure why this is a debate anymore. At least with those, the host continues to live to a more natural death.
No, what I said was that the bulk of the anti stem cell research people are getting elected to office by people who believe that. And I know it isn't all of them, but it is enough for it to be a consideration to the elected officials.
It is a slippery slope argument but it isn't an invalid one. And as to living my life that way, I am only wanting to live _MY_ life that way. That is why I don't support funding being forcibly taken from me and given to people doing things that I am firmly against. I don't really care what the legal definition of life is, at one time Black people were only part human legally. That thankfully has changed now but the legality of it didn't make it any more right. It was justification for actions to be placed into perspective but it doesn't make it right. We wouldn't dream of making that the legal definition again or going back to other legal practices supported by law at one time.
A long time and forever is seemingly different terms. And the point is, even with your justifications, it was privately funded even when funded by political and religious l
Throughout this thread, you've argued that allocating public monies for science and the like is "unconstitutional." What was clearly meant was "Pudge's interpretation is that this is unconstitutional." You are mistaken in the notion that my language is imprecise. I believe my interpretation -- well, James Madison's -- is the correct one. It is no less reasonable for me to say that federal money for public schools is unconstitutional that it is for anyone else to say that warrantless wiretapping or prior restraint on the press is unconstitutional. Obviously, it refers to one's interpretation of the Constitution.
Indeed, though I quote Justice Frankfurter and agree with what he said, I disagree with many of his rulings. He says the selective incorporation of the rights clause of the 14th Amendment is constitutional. I say it's not. Neither of us is being imprecise; that we are speaking of our own opinion of proper interpretation is necessarily implicit. Until you leave slashdot for the high court, your individual reading won't get you very much! Since I agree with Madison, that's fine, because his words on the subject carry more weight than those of anyone else who has, or ever will, exist.
The overwhelming majority of government-funded science research, however, does not have such a legitimate purpose.
They don't have to be freakish, that is just a term I used to describe it But what else would or should an outsider like me call it when you create life just to destroy it in the hopes of artificially helping someone already alive. I call it freakish. And no, the parents of a child should not be able to override the wishes of the child and make them organ donors.
Actually, I have a big problem with organ donation too. Because there is a short window between the time and organ is viable and when the organ isn't capable of being transplanted. This often means that they keep the body artificially alive in some cases in order to get the organs. If they can keep me alive, they better not be letting me die just to get my organs. If I am dead, no heart beat, no brain waves or patterns what so ever, then take them. If i am alive, even if it isn't consciously me, I find it atrocious that anyone would see it "just" to kill me off just to give my organs away. I am not and will never be an organ donor for that reason. I know they claim that they will not let you die or not try less hard to save you because of your status as an organ donor. But I know people who work in hospitals and I have too, I know first hand that they let people die to fill organ lists. If you are an organ donor, you seem to have a slightly better chance of dieing from trauma injuries when you are healthy and the hospital or doctors know your a donor then if your a drug adict and your organs would be problematic in transplants. Call it coincidence, happenstance, or whatever, I have formed my opinion on it and it involves the freakishness of letting people die to give use of their organs to other people which is contrary to my goal of not dieing. and to be even more accurate, let change that to; do parents have the right to "kill" or allow someone in the name of science "kill" and donate the organs and bodies of their under-aged children altruistically?
Answer to (1), the same can be said about elements of embryonic stem cell research.
the answer to (2), replace should with could. It is only from the perspective that you are right in that "should" would be a proper term. However, since there is debate over the topic, we can't assume you are in the right, only that you think you are. I will tie this into the answer to statement (3) a little more below. But remember, human rights is something inherent, not given. We can change the legal definitions all day long to define who is and who isn't human, who is and who isn't alive, and everything else we want to do. The legal definitions, while justifying the actions, don't justify the morality or moral correctness of it. In fact, you don't even need to place morality into the mix, some state don't have laws on the books making it illegal to molest and animal for sexual enjoyment. But that doesn't make the act of doing so right. Similarly, Most states have laws saying that killing is illegal. Very few have self defense laws but recognize that answering force with like force in the protection of your own life, even if it results in killing another person is justified. In other words, the law or lack of one, doesn't decide absolute moral correctness or what is right and wrong.
And finally, the answer to (3). The public good doesn't justify acts. At the risk of evoking Godwin's law, Hilter was persecuting the jews in the name of the pub
A:) I said it. Because I think it is pertinent. B:) cosmetic surgery is one thing, the ability to live or die is another. And the point is, we are asking the kid to giv up his life without asking but buy simply saying you aren't old enough to be capable of making this decision, therefor you will die so we can experiment and see if we can't take any parts of you to help people who haven't taken care of their own bodies. I mean after all, your analogy has to be kept in the context of what we where discussing, other wise it is little more then a strawman argument that doesn't deserve an answer.
Lol.. I'm not refusing anyone else's ignorance or willingness to get killed for the benefit of others. I'm just not not letting it happen to me. And no, there wouldn't be any moral guilt, or at least not any more then I already carry from circumstances already in existance. Taxes funding the war, paying police to shoot first and ask questions later like why does that cell phone look like a gun when a black man carried it? There are more. But I think you missed the entire point of my rejection of it, it was to stay alive with people working to keep me alive as long as possible. You might think this is greedy but it doesn't mean I am against transplants.
Lol.. I never said anything of the sorts. I said, and paraphrasing it, that for the good of the people doesn't mean it is morally, ethically, or responsibly right. Technically, the most evil and reprehensible things that have happened in the name of "for the good of the people" where actually in "for the good of the people" left "alive". In some cases, it would be hard pressed to be able to deny that the people left didn't benifit. So "for the good of the people" however well meaning, doesn't mean anything on the value of right or wrong. I can name quite a few characters in history that where trying to better their nation and fellow man. It still didn't make it right.
I didn't mention anything about cleaner of dirtier, I said Science can, was, and will be funded privately. A church wasn't the government, even when they had power and influence to rival governments.
I'll have to contact PBS and the people who made that documentation on his life that aired just a few weeks ago and tell them that they are wrong then. According to them, the church gave him a job at a college they operated and paid him to do his work and teach for a time as an incentive for him to no goto france and accept an offer to do the same there.
No, I'm looking to not die because some doctor valued someone else's life over mine. They are free as hell to value my life over someone else's. Especially, when that person said it was ok to do so by becoming an organ donor. It isn't a hard concept to follow.
No, because I value my kids right to live because a doctor valued his life over another person's when their parents said go ahead and stop saving my baby, maybe you can cut him up and help out someone else's. If they were going to do that to me or my baby, I would be against it. And I am against funding it with my money.
You only think it is extremes because your not keeping the contexts of what was said. Instead you yourself are wondering all over the place and taking my comments with you. I have been pretty tolerant of it but it started crossing some boundaries that I didn't want to cross.
Lol.. Yes, the military spending. How ignorant of me for not noticing that making a drum that people could fit in while still breathing when it was placed under the watter was such a scientific endeavor. Any science found from that was already in existence, just not applied together. Of course we did accidently find that we could kill people doing science that way too.
No, no, no. You're reading into things here. Of course I am not surprise seeing how you have done that with too many other things we have discussed. Providing for the defense of the country does not mean funding science, it mean exploiting anything that can achieve that goal. Science and military spending hasn't been recognized as synonymous until after WW2. Nice try at applying your modern world view to historical representations that didn't have a clue to the concept. Engineers would probably have been used but engineer weren't considered part of science back then. Any funding for either as a science specifically would have been incidental or coincidental to other objectives and goals. It still holds true that they didn't fund science.
Well, first, I don't think either of us are truly touching on Godwin's law. In it's original form, it had to do with comparisons and stuff like that. But lately, it seems that any mention of WW2's losing side brings it about.
It is possible I might change my mind. But my understanding is that they can make the embryonic stem cells from adult cells which would have the added benefit of being developed from my own cells which means no rejection most likely. And the reason it is hard for you to follow is because we jumped around to much on it. It started as stem cells, went to organ donation which I also disagreed on but for slightly different reasons (as in killing me) and then back and forth.
But you see, we didn't consciously set out to do that until after bush submitted his paper in '45. Every thing else up to then was mostly incidental to other objectives. Sure science benefited, but no, we didn't set out to do science, we set out to do something else and had to touch it.
Well, I guess WW1 which is where biological and chemical warfare really showed it's ugly head with the trench warfare and all. But, as I said, it was killing the enemy, not learning how to create compounds for the sake of teaching our grade schoolers.
Exactly my point. We didn't really separate the science or hold it to a conscious entity. It was incidental to the other task at hand. It took Bush in 1945 to discover a sustained benefit from separating and distinguishing science and push for a separate source for funding. This brought about the science as we know it today where money is specifically allocated to discovery and projects that have no relationship with other goals or projects or at least didn't need one. After this, it was realized that we needed a bank of knowledge for our own protection instead of figuring things out as we went and having it passed down to tradesman.
To me, it is apples and oranges. Sure they are both fruit but the methods and reasoning or justification behind them are entirely different. Remember, this thread started of because of a story that the physical sciences were taking a hit in funding, not the DHS, DOE, Military or any other science efforts which you already acknowledged gets it's funding through the budgets for those parts of the budget separately from what is being cut.
Pkease go abck and read what I said and then post it for me. There is the part where I was attempting to shack you up, but before that, the closed thing I have come to was saying we shouldn't be funding embryonic stem cell research and cloning with our tax dollars. Those are just two small and minor parts of science and should be taken to mean all of science. If you insist that not funding a segment of science is not funding science in general, then yes, I have, but only to the extent I mentioned.
It is interesting with the amount of influence over the policies of other countries have. I can hope that the same justifications can be used to convince other countries to simply not allow the patenting of this stuff in the first place and invalidate what is already on the table.
I would be in opposition of it is I lived in CA. But understanding how government works, even with federalism or not, I couldn't stand in the way of other voters who convinced the government to make the decision. This was really my point when getting into this, the comments were made about evil republicans kooks who don't support X because of their religion/whatever. In touching on this subject, I was attempting to demonstrate that those republicans were following the majority of the people who vote them into power. Considering that a good portion of the population doesn't register to vote, and of those, there is is a good portion who don't show up to vote, and considering the closely contested races, it is possible for less then half the population to vote republicans into power with a portion of those voters saying "not with my tax money". Because the "not with my tax people" have a majority influence on the majority being elected, and all other things considered, we can have a policy on this subject that only reflects 25% to 45% of the population. But when viewing it from the people in power's perspective, it is essential to staying in power. This is why it looks like kooks or whatever are against it and not the people voting them into office for these reasons.
I would continue to vote for people of like mind but I wouldn't attempt to evade my taxes if I lived in CA or if the US government changed it's positions. And there are more important issues to me then this, so I wouldn't be afraid to vote for someone who supported public funding in these areas if something else made much more sense according to my political ideals.
Well, we have sort of changed the directions of our spending which influences this thought processes. I have seen that with programs like reduced and free school lunches and breakfasts. In 1998(ish), the government, and I'm sorry that I don't remember for certain if it was federal or state, spent almost 25% of the money allocated for reduced and free lunches at schools in advertising to people that they could be eligible for them. They weren't claiming these kids were going hungry, just that people who could be on the program might not be on it and they were wanting to put them in the program whether they were providing their kid's breakfasts and lunches or not. My neighbor had two kids, single, and put them into the program with a $45,000 annual salary (I helped her do her taxes so I know what she was making). I guess the schools got other funding based on how many students took the free lunches.