California Is Moving On from ESCR

Funding adult stem cell research rather than ESCR is not just good ethics, it's also good science...and good business. From an Investor's Business Daily editorial:

Five years after a budget-busting $3 billion was allocated to embryonic stem cell research [through Prop 71], there have been no cures, no therapies and little progress....

Supporters of the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative, passed in 2004, held out hopes of imminent medical miracles that were being held up only by President Bush's policy of not allowing federal funding of embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) beyond existing stem cell lines and which involved the destruction of embryos created for that purpose.

Five years later, ESCR has failed to deliver and backers of Prop 71 are admitting failure. The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the state agency created to, as some have put it, restore science to its rightful place, is diverting funds from ESCR to research that has produced actual therapies and treatments: adult stem cell research. It not only has treated real people with real results; it also does not come with the moral baggage ESCR does.

Everyone could have been saved a lot of money and trouble if those who were pushing so hard for ESCR had spent less time calling the opposition names and more time engaging their arguments. The editorial has it exactly right:

It is ESCR researchers who have politicized science and stood in the way of real progress. We are pleased to see California researchers beginning to put science in its rightful place.

Comments

[Ron]

Servicing the bonds costs CA taxpayers about $200 million per year. The total state budget is over $80 billion.

So Prop 71 amounts to about 0.25% percent of the total state budget. It is about as 'budget busting' as subscribing to a daily newspaper.

I'll offer the following link as an example of progress in escr.

http://tinyurl.com/ybvyl6v

Companies involved in this research are actual investors, not editorial writers.

RonH

[Newbietu]

Looks like other researchers are doing something similar with adult cells:
http://www.hhmi.org/news/melton20080827.html

And those don't need the "protective coating" to prevent the immune system from destroying them.

And whether $200 million is literally budget-busting or not, that's an enormous amount of money being poured into something that has so far shown NONE of the miraculous results they promised and has the added side benefit of slaughtering our children for the sake of our health.

The Hippocratic Oath to "do no harm" should count for embryos, too.

[Lumbergh]

And where is the apology for the ugly, mean-spiritied, unjustified name calling? Oh, we get an excuse instead (on page 44) That seems fair.

[ryan]

I guess the lesson is that it is okay to let politics direct science, as long as it is the right kind of politics.

[RonH]

Newbietu,

Following multiple lines of inquiry is often wise _even_ in applied research - where you know exactly what you are after. It is perhaps yet wiser in pure research where your goals are more open ended.

As far as the Hippocratic Oath goes: A 5-day embryo has no interests. It has no stake in anything. It can't be 'harmed' in the way we can.

RonH

[KWM]

>>”A 5-day embryo has no interests. It has no stake in anything. It can't be 'harmed' in the way we can”.

Here we go on the “interests” train again. Life is of no interest to RonH. I’ve yet to find a biological definition of “interests”.

Maybe a 6-day embryo has them? 7 day?

[Lumbergh]

"A 5-day embryo has no interests."

He/she has an interest in survival i.e. not being experimented upon for the sake of politically correct pseudo science.

[David Hawkins]

Hi RonH,

>>"It is about as 'budget busting' as subscribing to a daily newspaper."

Excellent counter to the "budget-busting" adjective. Had this been a high school debate, it would have been a clever quip. Unfortunately, since this is not a high school debate...

Practicality and common sense should, I think, make an attempt to re-surface. The percentages you tout are moot....IF the state has very little money...or in CA's case..no money. Big percentage, small percentage...doesn't matter if the piggy bank is empty.

If a guy is broke, he cancels his satellite TV, stops eating out, and even stops getting the newspaper...if he's inclined to use good sense.

Ron, does opposition to ESCR research (that results in dead human embryos) get under your skin because you think it may be medicine's holy grail, or just because so many people who happen to oppose it are Christians?

Or perhaps it's frustrating for those who do not yet think a human embryo qualifies as a human being, a person, and/or one of this country's youngest citizens.

I know we've been down that path with previous posts, and I'd submit that it's the "what" that's being destroyed that provides the basis for our opposing positions.

Also from before: The ESCR hopes are kept alive not by a "treatment breakthrough" notion, but by the pro-choice agenda. They will lose much ground in the abortion debate should ESCR lose ground because of a moral concern for human embryos. There are pro-aborts who will never let that happen. Too much of a direct and unavoidable line into the realm of abortion rights. Pro-choicers will rue the day ESCR is abandoned.

[Louis Kuhelj]

ESCR is not the only example where science has been harnessed to a political cause. Gender confusion issues have been another horse that science has been tethered to. Although science has clearly shown that such confusion can be easily cleared up with good science by looking at the XY and XX chromosomes. A recent article in the New York times clearly states that XY combination determines that someone is a male and not some kind of emotional feeling on the part of the confused individual.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/science/14gene.html

[RonH]

Lumbergh,

In order to ascribe interests to the 5-day embryo, you offer a meaning of 'interest' different from the one normally used in the weighing of interests. We don't normally consider the interests of parties without consciousness, sensation, or memory.

David Hawkins,

If I were to hit hard times, it is very unlikely I would cancel my newspaper subscription. The saving would do little to improve my finances. And I need the information in the paper (especially the help wanted ads) for my future.

I think opposition to ESCR gets under my skin because I have a science background. I find it easy to imagine myself in the position of having bogus restrictions put in my work and it angers me. Please forgive the wording. I might be able to find a gentler way to describe the feeling but I promised to be elsewhere so I can't take the time now to find those words.

RonH

[Sage S.]

RonH,

How is the ethical concern over the deliberate destruction of a human organism for research a "bogus restriction?" If any moral limitation upon scientific research is bogus, then the Nazi experiments on the undesirables were entirely legitimate.

In your view, is humanity rightly subject to the unrestrained work of scientists so that knowledge might proliferate to its fullest potential?

[Brad B]

RonH has the benefit to feel anger about something/anything because the 6 day old conceptus RonH was allowed to survive. Had some science background enthusiast like RonH had access to the 6 day old embryo RonH fpr some speculative experiment, he certainly would not have said benefit of speaking his mind now.

Now, he might just say so what, I wouldn't have even known what I missed or even known self awareness, so no harm done, but is there really no harm done?

[RonH]

Sage,
The real question is: How is it not bogus? And, of course not: I can see no reason for scientists to work under more or fewer restrictions than anyone else.

Brad,
Yes, there is really no harm done. Yes the embryo dies. But it has no interest in the matter: like, for example, a peanut that dies when you roast it.

[Lumbergh]

"In order to ascribe interests to the 5-day embryo, you offer a meaning of 'interest' different from the one normally used in the weighing of interests. We don't normally consider the interests of parties without consciousness, sensation, or memory."

RonH
Your point is refuted by "Step 2" in "The Pro-life Two-step" post.

[KWM]

Hi RonH,

>>”Yes the embryo dies. But it has no interest in the matter: like, for example, a peanut that dies when you roast it.”

What "interest" does a newborn have that would qualify it to live?

[Brad B]

Hi KWM, if I might piggyback onto your question and ask "by what judge and what standard is the judge bound to that gives him authority to deny the 6 day old RonH normal developement?" Or are you just giving us "the world according to RonH's" opinion?