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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| Behind the Cell Curve |
| 2009-03-11 |
| By Kathleen Parker WASHINGTON -- As he lifted the ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research Monday, President Barack Obama proclaimed that scientific decisions now will be made "on facts, not ideology." This sounds good, but what if there were other nonideological facts that Obama seems to be ignoring? One fact is that since Obama began running for president, researchers have made some rather amazing strides in alternative stem cell research. Unfortunately, the stem cell debate has been characterized as a conflict between science (as though science is always right) and religious "kooks" (as though religious folk are never right). In choosing sides, it is, indeed, easier to imagine lunch with a researcher who wants to resurrect Christopher Reeve (whom Obama couldn't resist mentioning) and make him walk again, than with the corner protester holding a fetus in a jar. Moreover, as Obama said, the majority of Americans have reached a consensus that we should pursue this research. Polling confirms as much, but most Americans, including most journalists and politicians, aren't fluent in stem cell research. It's complicated. If people "know" anything, it is that embryonic stem cells can cure diseases and that all stem cells come from fertility clinic embryos that will be discarded anyway. Neither belief is entirely true. In fact, every single one of the successes in treating patients with stem cells thus far -- for spinal cord injuries and multiple sclerosis, for example -- have involved adult or umbilical cord blood stem cells, not embryonic. And though federal dollars still won't directly fund embryo destruction, federally funded researchers can obtain embryos privately created only for experimentation. Thus, taxpayers now are incentivizing a market for embryo creation and destruction. The insistence on using embryonic stem cells always rested on the argument that they were pluripotent, capable of becoming any kind of cell. That superior claim no longer can be made with the spectacular discovery in 2007 of "induced pluripotent stem cells" (iPS), which was the laboratory equivalent of the airplane. Very simply, iPS cells can be produced from a skin cell by injecting genes that force it to revert to its primitive "blank slate" form with all the same pluripotent capabilities of embryonic stem cells. But "induced pluripotent stem cells" doesn't trip easily off the tongue, nor have any celebrities stepped forward to expound their virtues. (If only Angelina Jolie would purse those pouty lips and say "pluripotent.") Even without such drama, Time magazine named iPS innovation No. 1 on its "Top 10 Scientific Discoveries" of 2007, and the journal Science rated it the No. 1 breakthrough of 2008. The iPS discovery even prompted Dr. Ian Wilmut, who cloned Dolly the sheep, to abandon his license to attempt human cloning, saying that the researchers "may have achieved what no politician could: an end to the embryonic stem cell debate." And, just several days ago, Dr. Bernadine Healy, director of the National Institutes of Health under the first President Bush, wrote in U.S. News & World Report that these recent developments "reinforced the notion that embryonic stem cells ... are obsolete." Many scientists, of course, want to conduct embryonic stem cell research, as they have and always could with private funding. One may agree or disagree with their purposes, but one may also question why taxpayers should have to fund something so ethically charged when alternative methods are available. Next comes a move to lift the unfortunately named Dickey-Wicker amendment in Congress, which prohibits using tax dollars to create human embryos for research purposes. If the amendment is rescinded, then human embryos can be created and destroyed with federal tax dollars. Good people can disagree on these things, but those who insist that this is "only about abortion" miss the point. The objectification of human life is never a trivial matter. And determining what role government plays in that objectification may be the ethical dilemma of the century. In this case, science handed Obama a gift -- and he sent it back. The stem cell debate has been a classic case of misinformation. After Obama revoked the Bush regulation preventing federal funding the other day there were the usual headlines which painted a significantly different picture from those in the field who pay attention. There have been a few excellent essays on the complexity of the ethical debate which has been completely lost in the general discussion. It is a debate which exercises the minds of serious ethicists as distinct from bomb throwing luddites. But the unwillingness of the MSM to characterize any recognition of the existence of various reasonable and conflicting viewpoints is more evidence of the endemic and shallow discourse for which it stands roundly condemned. In short the proposition that ideology has no place in science is fanciful nonsense. Was the Manhattan Project science without ideology or was it informed by an ideological position which sustained it? These are weighty subjects and deserve the attention of great minds. Sean Penn et al need not apply. |
| Posted by:Omoter Speaking for Boskone7794 |
| #1 The worst of this is that this won't stop the embryonic folks from getting all the money. We've all noted how AGW gets all the grants even though there's lots of competing theories. I've read something that makes me think that scientists, with the advent of government largess, have become a herd of money grubbers no matter what the branch. To whit from the theoretical physicist Lee Smolin: String theory has such a dominant position in the academy that it is practically career suicide for young theoretical physicists not to join the field. Even in areas where string theory makes no predictions, like cosmology and particle phenomenology, it is common for researchers to begin talks and papers by asserting a belief that their work will be derivable from string theory sometime in the future The point that Smolin is making is that, despite string theory being no theory at all but more of a hunch (as put by one of its strongest PROPONENTS, Nobel Laureate David Gross) "We don't know what we are talking about...We are missing perhaps something absolutely fundamental." all the money and all the resources are going to string theory alone and younger scientists are being coerced into touting the party line. Smolin likens this to an emotional rather than analytical response. I'd say religious, just like the Gaia worshippers. My point is that all sciences are being corrupted by our grant processes so that none of them are safe and as a result, in this case, the meme of embryonic stem cells will continue to be dominant regardless of things like iPS. Quotes from the introduction of "The Trouble with Physics" by Lee Smolin. |
| Posted by: AlanC 2009-03-11 15:21 |