| | Adam, my friend,
Why have you tempted me into making you looking foolish? I have a weakness for argumentation like this, I cannot resist it. I now must dismantle this piece of garbage you call an article. You have only yourself to blame.
>>You note the Democratic convention's focus on additional US funds for stem-cell research. But the Democrats are not the only ones who plan to spend tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on research they favor. US Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson announced recently a $ 19,000,000 initiative, to fund 3 "centers of excellence" to promote the 19 stem cell lines that existed back on August 9, 2001 - when President Bush prohibited the use of subsequently developed stem cell lines in US-funded research. Most of those 19 pre-2001 stem cell lines cannot be used for human therapy at all. The rest have only the most marginal applicability to a minuscule fraction of potential therapies.<<
Actually there are about 70 embryonic stem cell lines upon which federally funded research can be done. Bush's policy was to permit funding on existing lines and ban funding that involved the deliberate destruction of embryos to obtain new lines. There is, of course, no prohibition on stem cell research, embryonic or otherwise, in the U.S. -- just limitations on what scientists can force the taxpayer to pay for.
As for the marginal applicability of any particular embryonic stem cell line, all are marginal at best because there remains no clear path to any therapy. One of the many big hurdles is the inability to determine that a cell cultured from an embryonic stem cell has lost its potency for change once implanted into a patient -- e.g., cells turning into teeth and hair in the brains of Parkison's sufferers. Another basic problem is that we cannot replicate the mechanical environment which causes embryonic stem cells to evolve. Even if there were clear progress toward a particular therapy, any cells cultured from any embryonic stem cell line present the problem of rejection by the patient, just as any organ transplant does.
>>In the case of abortion, the focus on "government-funded abortion" was a distraction from the objective moral principle: that the government treat abortion like any other application of medical technology to the betterment of human life. Similarly, in the case of medical research using embryonic stem cells, the principle is that only moral agents can have rights - and embryos are not moral agents. ...<<
Your argument is strictly utilitarian: We should harvest human embryos because they can make things better for a collective called "human life". Whether or not one things a human embryo is a human being, why does this naked utilitarian argument merit any respect?
>>... The spotlight that both Democrats and Republicans shine on government funding distracts our attention from what the rest of the government is doing. Through the US Food and Drug Administration, the Bush administration recently sent, to companies considering investment in stem-cell research, an indirect message that could be more devastating, in the long run, than Bush's 2001 ban on using new cell lines in taxpayer-funded projects. ... On May 8, 2001, Steven Galson, acting director of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, decided to prohibit over-the-counter sale of emergency contraceptive Plan B. He made this decision against all scientific evidence evaluated the the FDA's own scientific staff, and against the nearly unanimous (23-4) vote of the expert advisory panel of outside scientists appointed by the agency. ... Yet the Bush administration insists on having Steven Galson's decision, capricious, salacious, dishonest and contrary to evidence though it was, enforced - as a warning, to any enterprise that would invest in therapies contrary to this administration's false morality: if you develop products that the Bush administration disapproves of, you will not be allowed to sell them.<<
Complaining as though the FDA were just recently politicized by the Bush administration is disingenuous to say the least. In any event, the FDA is required to account for social factors, not just medical evidence, in decisions. (Just on more good reason why it shouldn't exist in the first place.) So, even assuming that the Bush administration overruled the FDA's preliminary evaluation to approve the over-the-counter sale of the Plan B "morning after" pill for reasons of social policy, it was within its authority to do so.
However, there was a legitimate scientific dispute about restricting the sales of Plan B to prescription only. There was only scanty evidence, based upon accidental ingestion of Plan B by pregnant women, as to its effects upon a developing child. If sold by prescription, then a doctor could determine that a woman was not beyond conception before prescribing the drug.
Of course, none of all this tempest-in-a-teapot fuss about the Plan B "morning after" pill stopped it from being brought to market.
>>This amounts to a de-facto ban on private industry investment in disapproved stem-cell research. A prohibition that the industry, dependent as it is on the FDA's permission to sell its products, will not permit its scientists to challenge. With the exception of a few tiny efforts by the surviving remnants of non-profit institutions without federal funding, stem-cell therapy research has been terminated in America.<<
How the Plan B matter manifests itself into a "de-facto ban on private industry investment in disapproved stem-cell research" is beyond me. That the stem cell research "industry" will not permit its scientists to challenge the FDA is a fabrication. Futhermore, there are plenty of research efforts going on. To the extent that more isn't occurring because non-profits haven't weaned themselves from the federal tit, is certainly not an issue for any of us who think fewer rather than more tax dollars should be feeding these institutions in the first place.
>>Stem cell based organ repair is the only therapeutic technology with a realistic prospect of success against death from organ system failure. US National Center for Health Statistics counted in 2001 - the most recent year for which complete data are available - 700,142 deaths from heart disease, 123,013 from chronic lower respiratory diseases, 71,372 from diabetes, 53,852 from Alzheimer's disease, and 39,480 from kidney diseases. Conservatively estimating that only one-third of those deaths will become preventable with the application of stem cell based therapies, every year of government-imposed delay in the development of those therapies kills 329,000 Americans.<<
At the present there is no "realistic" prospect of any therapy by developed from stem cell research. Moreover, I note you stopped distinguishing between embryonic stem cell research (upon which there exists only a mild restriction on federal funding) and non-embryonic stem cell research (which has no restrictions at all). Your "conservative" estimate of the one-third of deaths stem cell therapies will prevent doesn't tell us how important if at all embryonic stem cells will be in that effort. But it's all hooey, any because there are no present prospects for therapies.
As for the government delaying anything, it hasn't. Nothing is stopping private funds from paying for stem cell research.
>>A few foreign efforts in stem-cell therapy research continue, but the loss of American research to date means at least two years' delay. That's about 658,000 sick Americans who could have lived but will die, with the Christianist agenda of their own government as root cause.<<
An utterly baseless assertion. It assumes success that could be had in stem cell research absent what? Bush's LIFTING of the ban on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research? Some Christian cabal supporting Bush's lifting of that ban? You can't even come up with a logical conspiracy, let alone a plausible one.
>>At 58, I will have about 40-50 more years to live if stem-cell research resumes - and only about 20 if it remains effectively prohibited. With both Republicans and Democrats in a spending frenzy, the rest of my life is likely to be poor. But if the Democrats were to be elected, and mandate decisions based on objective science at the FDA, and spend my money on research into human health instead of the Republicans' Christianist agenda, then at least, while poor, my remaining life will be reasonably long.<<
This is the clincher, isn't it? Better to have more government if less government happens to coincide with the agenda of some Christians. That's assinine enough in itself, but what makes you think that socialist Democrats are going to require "objective science" at the FDA any more than your "Christianist" Republicans?
Regards,
Bill
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