blog.bioethics.net

Best title ever from the editors and pseudoeditors. Blur that line between ethical and unethical "stem cells." But remind us that death is the subject for the embryo destroyers. Another case of projection, guys. Did y'all plan this one out at the Progressive lunch last week?
US taxes have never been used to destroy embryos even before August, 2001. But, it was legal with non-tax money then and it's legal now.
BTW, the President vetoed a bill without any allocation of funds.

- by Beverly on Jul 19, 2006 at 11:18 PM | link

I agree with Beverly. It is more about the use of tax dollars than what you have posted. There may be other ventures that tax dollars go to that are just as controversial, but I am not aware of any at this point.

- by M. Harper on Jul 20, 2006 at 1:11 AM | link

You can't really do much without tax money, at least for the basic science research that will build the foundation for understanding how to design real treatments. Opponents of the bill have been saying that the therapies are years away. As the funding has been cut dramatically in the past 5 years (for the NIH as a whole), and specific funding for embryonic stem cells has been nil, therapies will be DECADES away unless funding is allowed.
Death is the subject of the embryo destroyers? Remember that we're talking about a cluster of 100 cells, without a brain, without a heart, without a personality. In the decades that we lose by blocking funding, how many millions will die and suffer from disease? Real people. With brains and hearts. With loved ones.
Every day over a thousand Americans die of heart attacks. That's two 9/11's a week. Yet what will we spend on the cure?

- by Sunny on Jul 20, 2006 at 1:20 AM | link

I agree that tax dollars are part of the issue here, but the President also seems to be largely playing off of an emotional aspect, as he's done many times before - abortion, gay marriage, a "bill that will support the taking of innocent human life in the hope of finding medical benefits for others" (from his announcement of the veto). He ignores the facts (which is infuriating), but it still stirs people up, and naturally when money becomes involved, people get all the more enthusiastic.

- by annoyed on Jul 20, 2006 at 1:40 AM | link

Why on earth should we take our ethics from scientists? Do they have some expertise in the area that I'm unaware of?
I'd like to hear more about the embryonic stem cell research efforts underway in Germany. Who is talking through his hat? Aren't there editors anymore? And where can we find an expert who is truly expert? I'm a dilettante and I know more about this stuff than you.
The objection that the president's policy is too limited is almost too humorous for words. There's a line between sophomoric and moronic, and this one has crossed the line.

- by Thomas on Jul 20, 2006 at 2:46 AM | link

Sunny, we're using adult stem cells, derived from the patient's own bone marrow, today. That research was pioneered by Dr. Willerson of Houston.
Also in Houston (in what was frequently called "the Republic of Texas, last week), private donors have given over $230 Million to found the Brown Institute for Molecular Medicine where the plan is to study embryonic stem cells that aren't covered under Federal funding.

- by Beverly on Jul 20, 2006 at 6:21 AM | link

Whew. An amazingly dishonest headline and deceptive article. This President is the first and only President to authorize any research into embryonic stem cells. Moreover, he fully supports expansion of research into adult stem cells, which has demonstrated it has far more potential and success than embryonic stem cell research.
Why is this blog called "bioethics"? This post demonstrates the poster knows nothing about either biology nor ethics.
If you are so hell-bent on spending money on this, then get out your checkbook and write the check to some organization engaging in this so-called "research."

- by Antihesis on Jul 20, 2006 at 9:32 AM | link

Art Caplan asks: In fact, if the president was so concerned about the fate of embryos, why did he not speak out to close infertility programs around the country that destroy embryos? Why did he not try to shut down privately funded embryonic stem cell research? And, if the president was so worried about destructive embryo research, why did he not propose a ban on bringing across our borders any cure or therapy that might be discovered overseas if it was based on embryonic stem cell research?
It's due to the structure of US government.
Bush has used the veto to block federal funding on the behalf of a minority of people with strongly held views. The Federalist 73 argues that this is exactly why the President ought to have the veto power.
To do anything more than philosophize about Caplan's other proposals would require a lot more than a veto.
Furthermore, some people (such as Thoreau) would draw a distinction between supporting an activity, versus not acting to end that activity:
"It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even to most enormous, wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support."
Henry David Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience" (1849).
I don't entirely endorse Thoreau's view, but I think ethicists should give him proper respect.

- by Electrolux on Jul 20, 2006 at 1:45 PM | link

Actually, I disagree with Art Caplan and agree with Bush's veto. Not because I am opposed to ESC research but because I question the efficacy of all government-funded scientific R&D.
I believe much of of government funded R&D to be fraudulent. Look and NASA and the fusion program as examples. NASA has done nothing to effect the human expansion into space and has actually interfered with private efforts to do the same. NASA exists as a public works program for 20,000 civil servants until retirement.
Ditto for the Tokamak (ITER) fusion program. After 50 years and billions of dollars, we are still "50 years away" from commecial fusion. Noted researchers, such as Robert Bussard, who are pursuing alternative approaches to fusion say that the Tokamak is a boon-doggle that has no chance of success, whatsoever.
Same for much of medical research. Despite billions being spent on Nixon's "war against cancer", death rates due to cancer have not declined at all.
In all three cases, billions have been spent with no appreciable results or returns. The same is likely to be true for California's stem cell initiative.
The problem with all of the ranting and raving about Bush's veto is that the people doing it are equating not funding something with tax money with banning something. This is clearly not the case.
People are free to pursue ESC research using their own money, and thats the way it should be.

- by kurt on Jul 20, 2006 at 5:44 PM | link

Kurt--- Take a look at the NIH and give me an example. Try to get an R01 grant. Acceptance rates are less than 10%. Cancer is also an incredibly complicated problem, which may not be apparent to you. We certainly have come a long way in terms of outcomes and survival, due in large part to NIH basic science funding. The problem is that we need to understand diseases and indeed the basic workings of the human body better in order to provide the base for capitalists to invest in short-term yielding results. It might seem that most of the breakthroughs are being made by pharmaceutical companies, but very little would be possible without state funded research. So, if you think there's been no medical progress in the past 20 years, then you may be right, but most of us don't think that's the case.
Bev, Antihesis-
It is likely, to the best of our knowledge, that the pluripotency of hematopoietic stem cells that you speak of is rather limited if not irreversible. Yes, Willerson and others (Dr. Penn of the Cleveland Clinic, for example) have found some very useful applications for mesenchymal stem cells. Still, development of other organs (i.e. tissues that do not normally regenerate, such as neurons or tissues that have been completely destroyed i.e. pancreatic cells in Type I diabetes patients) may be actually impossible with a patient's hematopoietic stem cells. Totipotence of embryonic stem cells is of an entirely different nature and in comparison limitless, and development of such tissues has already been demonstrated with embryonic stem cells. Re: private donations, that's wonderful, but that's peanuts compared to the NIH budget. Stem cells are not all alike, I'm not sure if you've taken a molecular genetics or cell biology class recently.
Which gets me to
Thomas-
But scientists have a better idea of the comparative benefit of embryonic stem cells over adult stem cells. So I would argue that you SHOULD listen to the scientists when they say, these are the likely benefit of doing THIS vs. THIS. Then it's up to everyone to decide if that's worth it--- with regard to that, scientists have no special expertise.
And everyone that thinks that this doesn't limit ESC research:
Really this is about putting grants to fund ESC research in the same basket as all other public research...which effectively amounts to an increase in funding (at least, for the most promising and well written projects). Now, imagine that ESC are more promising than ASC (as most physicians and scientists I work with agree is likely the case)...ESC is going to get more funding. Or maybe it will take money away from another, less promising study. The point is that it puts it out there as an option. The NIH will fund grants relating to them if they show promise.

- by Sunny on Jul 21, 2006 at 3:37 AM | link

Sunny,
The NIH budget is necessarily limited in each of the categories and by the taxes collected and allocated to that agency - the total stem cell budget is not much more than the $230 Million raised in Houston, alone.
Did you read Limos' spinal cord trauma paper, yet.
http://www.apssci.org/pdf/olfactory.pdf
Or about the advances by Atala in North Carolina in regeneration of visceral organs?
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/11/health/11prof.html

- by Beverly on Jul 22, 2006 at 7:09 AM | link

Bush reserved his first veto as president for one of the only valuable things this do-almost-nothing Congress has managed to actually get done.
Before we delv into the particular disagreements concerning this bill, let me first state that it has been my perception that Congress has been able to accomplish little for some time now due to the inability of Democrat polititians to deal with their losses at the polls. They have been abstructionists on every issue. It has not been a matter of differences of opinions. They have presented none. They have presented no ideas. They have spent years now attacking and accusing without any grounds or proof. They fill the media with drive-by bombs that have created a huge divide in this country. Their bombs were nothing but conjecture and lacked substance, proofs or evidence. Conjectures that divided this country and cultivated a culture of hate on the left. A culture that needs no evidence, that relies not on common sense nor on rational thought. A culture that is so filled with hate that even the obsurd seems plausible to them. Conservative Congressmen have taken rational approaches to solve both present and developmg problems. They have met nothing but political ploys from the left to stop anything from being accomplished even at the expense of the American citizens.
Senate bill allowing public funding of embryonic stem cell research has been consigned to the legislative trash can.
Let us not spin this issue. The fact is that President Bush has already provided federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. This bill was to incease that level of funding. For years the American public has had to endure the bellyaching of the left on the issue of President Bush’s Federal spending policy. Liberals has bashed him left and right for so called “overspending”. But liberals have continuously put forward bills to Federally fund liberal pet projects. Liberals waile constantly in opposition to federal funding of conservative issues such as any social program tied to a christian organization. We see that it is not the ultimate beneficiaries of the program that are truly at heart, but rather the geo-politics of the issue and often the religious association involved. The church of Chrisianity vs. The church of Liberalism (Atheism).
The president, whose grasp of science left him unable to identify creationism as a fundamentally religious idea
All of the so-called scientific theories rely on less evidence than the so-called creationism theory. Science has plenty of theories with little evidence. Most of their claims are based on guess work. Judeo-Chrisianity has written documents and a firm tradition of handing down facts through generations prior to the invention of a formal alphabet. Creationism may be religiously based but it is no less scientific than your so-called scientific theories.
The president, whose grasp of science left him unable to identify creationism as a fundamentally religious idea, and his trusty sidekick Karl Rove, rarely seen in a white lab coat but who knows something about rats, having been in Washington for some time now, claim to know best which medical research is most likely to benefit diseased Americans in the future.
How Karl Rove got into your tyrade is beyond me. Must be that seething hate. President Bush does not make his decisions based on what he has read in TV guide. Many Pundits and Bloviators on the left do exactly that. They read or listen only to slanted information. The President has advisors. He has people who talk to scientist in the field and he bases his opinion on this information without giving up his moral values.
He noted that there were embryos, and many of them, already in existence in infertility clinics and left unwanted by those who created them. But he held it was wrong to use those in research. Instead, he told us, he had found a way out of the dilemma of how to do embryonic stem cell research without destroying any embryos…There were never 60 embryonic stem cell lines available for research. Not even close. Even if there had been, that number would never have been enough to support serious research on diseases and disorders for very long, as experts in embryonic stem cell research found out in less than a year.
Not only was Bush’s science wrong, the ethics behind his so-called compromise were deeply flawed, too.
There were 60 embryonic stem cell lines. But from what I have come to understand is that nearly half of them were not viable and unusable. As for the numbers to work with, I have also come to understand that the scientist were able to clone the stem cells. This gave them an endless supply of the lines that they do have.
If the president deemed it moral to use cell lines made from human embryos that had already been destroyed, then why would he argue that other embryos headed inevitably for destruction couldn’t be the source of new stem cell lines?
You just answered yourself. If you were dying, how many people would you require to give up their lives so that you could live?
In fact, if the president was so concerned about the fate of embryos, why did he not speak out to close infertility programs around the country that destroy embryos? Why did he not try to shut down privately funded embryonic stem cell research? And, if the president was so worried about destructive embryo research, why did he not propose a ban on bringing across our borders any cure or therapy that might be discovered overseas if it was based on embryonic stem cell research?
These are measures that the Congress would have to write into law for the president to sign. In other words these measures would take Congressional action. Do you think this Congress would?
If adult stem cell research were really an alternative to embryonic, then why have nearly all but the tiniest handful of the experts who work on stem cells maintained that this is false? And why has the president failed to secure the agreement of a single medical or scientific society of any standing with his position that a combination of funding a small number of existing stem cell lines made from human embryos and a push behind adult stem cell research is the best strategy to mend damaged brains and heal broken spinal cords?
There have been between 60 and 70 treatments and cures for diseases and disorders that have been derived from adult stem cell research to date. There have not even been any human trials for treatments or cures for diseases or disorders derived from embryonic stem cell research to date.
Evidence that the president’s views rest firmly on a foundation of deception layered with a rich mix of confusion and inconsistency is to be found in the enthusiasm with which Britain, China, India, Israel, Australia, Russia, Sweden, Germany, Canada, the Netherlands, Singapore, Korea, South Africa, France and many other nations have launched embryonic stem cell research programs.
This is not Sweden, Germany nor the Netherlands. This is the United States of America. If you would prefer to live in France, Russia or China then go. I do not believe that “We The People”, the majority of the US want to give up our soverignaty and feel British or Swedish or Canadian. The majority of the citizens of this country will not put up with it from our Supreme Court Justices nor people like you. I like to believe that we better and more moral than those other countries.
The only people who continue to put faith in the policy of promoting government funding for only adult stem cell research that the president is still babbling on about are the president, his close advisors, some conservative groups motivated by deeply-held religious views concerning embryos and a few neoconservative polemicists who seem desperate to find an issue that might bring them redemption after doing such a fine job contributing to the design of American foreign policy under Bush.
Sounds like you tried to include anyone who disagrees with you. The truth is that only adult stem cell research has produced results. Stem cell from a “blob of tissue” (as liberals like to refer to embryos) only produce blobs of tissue (tumors). This is all that scientists have accomplished to date. The only way to accomplish anything with embryonic stem cells is to grow the embryos until they begin to develop organs (lungs, livers, pancreas, stomachs and brains). But then the embryo takes on human form. Present that to the public and see how much support you would have.
Sending a clear message. With his veto of the bill creating federal funding and regulation over embryonic stem cell research, the president continues to ask us and, more notably, those who are sick and ailing amongst us, to swallow a false, morally incoherent policy.
He’s [President Bush] just keeping it real. You can continue to fill people with false hope over a failed research program. But know this if cures or treatments ever come about through stem cell research, it will be adult stem cell research.
Not too long after the president’s first speech on the subject, the sick and ailing recognized the president was not wise, but rather wacky, and decided to do something about it. With the help of high-profile efforts involving Nancy Reagan, Christopher Reeve, Mary Tyler Moore, Michael J. Fox and a less visible but incredibly committed and hugely influential phalanx of disease advocacy organizations a sound policy about embryonic stem cell research was articulated.
In the beginnings of stem cell research it was thought that embryonic stem cells were the keys to human lifes disorders and disease states. Since it has become apparent that embryonic stem cells are not the answer. It’s ashamed that those in deep emotional dispair should be prayed upon by people with a political agenda and those whose lively hood depend upon federal and university gra

- by Patrick on Aug 12, 2006 at 1:38 AM | link