The Left and Stem Cells

scientists may now be able to have the embryonic stem cells we've been told they need for research--without creating and destroying embryos to get them. If so, the argument is over.

Or, maybe, the argument is just beginning, for this news turns on its head everything in what the nation's newspapers have delivered to us as a story of blinkered pro-lifers vs. courageous scientists.

The people who turn out actually to have believed in the power of science are the pro-lifers--the ones who said that a moral roadblock is not, in point of fact, an outrageous hindrance, for scientists will always find another, less-objectionable way to achieve their goals. President Bush's refusal of federal funding for new embryonic stem cell lines didn't halt major stem-cell advances, any more than the prohibition against life-threatening research on human subjects, such as the infamous Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male, stopped the advance of medical treatments. For those who attacked the pro-lifers in the name of science, however, things look a little different. As Maureen L. Condic explained to First Things readers this year in her careful survey, "What We Know About Embryonic Stem Cells," the promises of medical breakthroughs were massively overblown by the media. But there were reasons for all the hype. I have long suspected that science, in the context of the editorial page of the New York Times, was simply a stalking-horse for something else. In fact, for two something-elses: a chance to discredit America's religious believers, and an opportunity to put yet another hedge around the legalization of abortion. After all, if our very health depends on the death of embryos, and we live in a culture that routinely destroys early human life in the laboratory, no grounds could exist for objecting to abortion.

Stem cell funding

It seems the Federal Government's restrictions on stem cell funding may have helped research.

That said, the current policy has created a state-by-state movement unprecedented in medical research. Most prominently, the passage of California's proposition 71 provides $3 billion to that state's stem cell research institutes. Although lawsuits from opponents to the initiative have delayed dispersal except for a recent set of $40 million grants, other states such as Connecticut, Illinois, and Wisconsin have followed the lead and begun to provide funding for researchers. The trend continues to develop at a rapid pace.

Stem cell research in companies may also have increased because of US policy. Many established companies have stem cell programs, which may be partially fueled by the concept that, with less federally funded academic research, more opportunity exists to develop intellectual property with in-house inventors or university researchers willing to take industrial funds and help translate research.

With the same philosophy as some commercial enterprises, many countries have taken advantage of the perceived reduction of US funding by focusing their efforts. Indeed, these countries may become competitive with the United States or even take the lead.

The author doesn't condone the policy, but the trends he notes indicate that other deep pockets, including private industry and philanthropy, are willing to fund research the Federal Government decides not to.

The Science Nazi

Doc Nuke proposes a new office: the Science Nazi.

His job is to walk up to those who reject science and tell them, No Science For You!

...continued in full post...

One of the other reasons the Intelligent Design folks don’t want to mention the method for the intelligence is that then they’d be forced to reveal that its just Creationism promoted by their evangelical Christian backers. I guess they just feel that Kansas, with its lack of topography, will be more open to their attempts to drag education back into the dark ages because nothing opens the mind more than a Kansas landscape. This is why we need the Science Nazi. In a situation like this, he would walk up to the Kansas Board of Education and announce: NO SCIENCE FOR YOU! What’s that Mr. Board Member? You want to use your cell phone? Sorry that was only possible with the scientific discovery of radio waves. NO SCIENCE FOR YOU! What’s that Mr. Intelligent Design/Creationist? You want to drive your giant SUV? Sorry, gasoline is a fossil fuel from the days of the dinosaurs, which don’t exist in your Bible. Not to mention the refining process, and the workings of the internal combustion engine. NO SCIENCE FOR YOU! What’s that Mr. Concerned Parent? You don’t support gay marriage cause it’s “unnatural” since gays can’t breed, even though your own quadruplets couldn’t have been born without fertility drugs? NO SCIENCE FOR YOU! What’s that President Bush? You don’t support stem cell research and denounce global warming, yet you want to bomb places and send spaceships to Mars? Bombs and rocket fuel don’t just magically appear like the voices in your head that told you to be president. NO SCIENCE FOR YOU! These are just a few of the reasons why we need the Science Nazi. We need to remind people that they can’t have it both ways. They can’t have their 21st century technology, medicine and conveniences and still expect society to adhere to fairy tales from 2,000 years ago. If they want that kind of life, they can hang out with the Amish or set up a sanctuary cut off from the world like in The Village. If they are lucky and a divine source is watching out for them, maybe a bunch of them won’t drop dead from easily curable diseases.

Though we disagree on a few points, I admit it's tempting to tell certain people that if they don't believe in the results of science, they should not expect to benefit from them.

This includes, for the People who Eschew Testing on Animals, no vaccines. No drugs. No surgical techniques that were first tested on animals.

For the Intelligent Design-Intelligent Origin Theory (ID-IOT) crowd, no crops that have benefited from any sort of breeding techniques. Let them eat teosinite.

But there's a problem.

Those who oppose the mainstream scientific opinion will assure you that whatever idea they're opposing is not, in fact, required to come up with whatever goodie they may want to use.

Medical advances need not be tested on animals, since tissue cultures and computer models will suffice. (OK, maybe they will now, but just how confident are you in the accuracy of any computer-generated result?)

ID-IOTs will insist that you can hybridize, selectively breed, and genetically engineer without believing that every living thing traces back to one common ancestor.

If your perspective is suffiently myopic, you can ignore arbitrarily large amounts of background. Just as a person can be revolted by the hunter and ignore the fact that her steak used to be walking around on four legs, believers in alternatives to current science will disregard the ultimate source for all the advances they rely on in their work, or for life and health.

The only way to really prove the issue would be to divide society into enclaves, each hermetically sealed from the other, and let each progress using the methods it considers true and correct. Over the course of generations, one of two things would happen: Any given enclave would independently drift over to something indistinguishable from modern science, theories, methods, and all, or it would independently fall behind and the standard of living in that enclave would lag behind that in the others. (Indeed, it might decline, and you'd have a massive die-off. Think of it as evolution in action.)

Stem cells

Michael Fumento on the somewhat curious fact that people are denigrating adult stem cell research and treatment in favor of embryonic stem cells.

Why is this curious? Well...

• Adult stem cells have been used therapeutically since 1968. Embryonic stem cells have not.
• There are 250 ongoing clinical trials with adult stem cells. There are zero with embryonic stem cells
• Research in adult stem cells is pretty well established. Adult stem cells have been researched for half a century. On the other hand, research on embryonic stem cells has only taken place for ... half a century.
• Adult stem cells can be made to differentiate into every type of tissue we might need, but we need to have several types on hand because not all types of stem cell will make all types of tissue. On the other hand, embryonic stem cells have the ability to turn into any kind of tissue (except, apparently, placental tissue). Of course, they're so difficult to work with, no one's had much luck turning them into anything at all.

So why the push to spend money on embryonic stem cell research (which may never pan out) and ignore the adult stem cells that are already curing diseases?

Adult stem cells come from all over the body, plus umbilical cords and placentas. Embryonic stem cells come from pulling apart human embryos, and thus have aroused ethical concerns. The result, says Chris Mooney in the Washington Monthly, is that "conservatives have latched onto fringe science in order to advance moral arguments" by embracing adult stem cell research. We are presented with the illogical argument that since some people prefer adult stem cells for nonscientific reasons, they must have little scientific value.

...and...

Ironically, the original motivation for the massive disinformation campaign is precisely the relative scientific superiority of adult stem cells. Savvy venture capitalists have plowed their money into adult stem cell research and treatment, leaving embryonic stem cell researchers desperate to feed at the government trough. It is they and their supporters who have latched onto fringe science.

Follow the money.

Stem cells

One interesting survey question would be, "Since President Bush took office, Federal funding for stem cell research has (a)increased or (b)decreased."

The New York Times has a "Fact Check" column on the subject of stem cell research.

Mr. Kerry said that "100 million Americans suffer from one disease or another that's chronically debilitating."

The Kerry campaign said it got the 100 million figure from the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research, an organization that advocates therapeutic cloning for the purpose of scientific study. The organization says this is the number of people who “suffer from cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, Parkinson’s, spinal cord injuries, heart disease, A.L.S. and other devastating conditions for which treatments must still be found.”

Mr. Bush said, as he often has during the campaign: "I'm the first president ever to allow funding, federal funding, for embryonic stem cell research."

Mr. Bush is literally accurate but not telling the whole truth when he says he was the first president to allow federal financing for stem cell research. The Republican Congress blocked President Bill Clinton when he tried to use government money for this kind of research. What Mr. Bush permitted was federal money for research only on the relatively small number of stem cell colonies that existed in August 2001 when his policy was announced. Scientists view this as putting a brake on research, not accelerating it.

OK, Kerry claims that approximately one in three Americans suffer from some debilitating disease. Well, I suppose that's possible. Some of these, like heart disease and cancer seem to be diseases everyone will get if they live long enough. Alzheimers also shows up, when it does, later in life.

And then there's that wonderful catch-all, "other devastating conditions".

Bush gets graded down on passing stem cell funding because his predecessor tried to pass funding. So Republican success must be judged in the light of Democratic intentions.

I'd love to know, by the way, which "scientists" regard increased funding as "putting a brake on research" and why they think so. I can see a case to be made for increased funding putting a brake on research, if the funds go into an option they don't expect to be productive, at the expense of those with more promise. But an unattributed statement about the beliefs of nebulous "scientists" doesn't leave much to explore.

Is it reasonable to believe some scientists might consider embryonic stem cells a dead end?

Scientists say embryonic stem cell research is a promising avenue that could lead to the treatment and possibly cure of dread diseases. But it is unlikely that anyone with these diseases today will be helped. So far, there has not even been successful treatment in mice, and no specific help for humans is on the horizon.

OK, it's promising, but that promise is nowhere near being realized. Maybe it's not all that promising. And frankly, there are limits to how much research in any one area can be accelerated by throwing money at it.

California Prop 71

Steven Milloy, of The Junk Science Page, has comments on California's Prop 71, which promises to encourage research in embryonic stem cells. He doesn't dwell on the science of embryonic stem cells in this piece, but rather on the possible motives of those who are behind the proposition.

At the risk of committing a Bulverism, he points out that a lot of the money generated by Prop 71 will go to benefit a number of private concerns, including one in which one of Prop 71's boosters holds a number of stock options.

StemCells Inc. has a stock price of $2/share, down from $15/share in 2000, but up from $1.24/share this past summer. If 71 passes, the price could easily pass $5.25/share, the price at which those stock options are worth anything.

At this point, what happens is going to depend on how the people who hold these options feel about the chances for stem cell research. If they think the influx of money will result in real progress, they'll stay in and bet their stock appreciates.

If, on the other hand, they don't think embryonic stem cell research will pay off, they'll cash in before the lack of success becomes obvious to everyone else, and the price of the stock will drop fairly quickly.

Given how well embryonic stem cells have performed in the past, Prop 71 may force Californians to pay $3 billion for a deflating balloon. If private investors want to gamble on this, they're welcome to. Just not with my money.

HEAL!!!

John Edwards (not the one who talks to dead people) has stated that if Kerry is elected, people like Christopher Reeve will get out of their wheelchairs and walk again.

I'll leave it to the smart-asses to point out the enormity of this promise, given that Mr. Reeve is dead. Obviously he refers to those who are still alive.

Charles Krauthammer is a medical doctor, and has a very personal stake in possible cures for paralysis. He is confined to a wheelchair as the result of an accident.

He shreds the lies Kerry and Edwards have spouted on the campaign trail, and takes them to task for their habit of saying whatever it will take to get them elected.

Read the whole thing.