Guest Post:
The Hidden Cost of our Stem Cell Policy
The President’s stem cell policy not only hurts federal research, but also wastes state and private money. In a report entitled “Too Much to Ask”, the Center for American Progress found that states have spent 86% of their funding on building infrastructure, training scientists and attracting researchers to the state, not on actual research.
The restrictive federal policy means researchers cannot use facilities or equipment purchased with federal funds to conduct research on stem cell lines that are ineligible for federal funding. This has forced states and private funders to spend large sums of money on redundant equipment and laboratories, as well as create expensive bureaucracies to track which costs can be paid with federal funds.
New Jersey is spending 75% of its money for stem cell research on new equipment and a stem cell research institute. The University of California-San Francisco is spending $6 million to remake a lab for stem cell research. As Dr. Dave Scadden, Co-Director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, said, “It really is something that has a very real impact and I can tell you, at our own center we have people using methods of analysis that we haven’t used in 10 years simply because the instruments that we usually use are ones that have federal money associated with them.”
While a higher percentage of future state funding will go to actual research projects, federal inaction is increasing the burden on state governments, taxpayers and private investors, and slowing down stem cell research too.
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Sam Berger, Research Assistant at the Progressive Bioethics Initiative at the Center for American Progress
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For at least 30 years, universities have managed to do in vitro fertilization and all sorts of other things not paid for by the Feds and Clinton signed the Dickey Amendment into law for the first time in 1996.
Why the big fuss now?
All the embryonic stem cells are patented, anyway. WiCell/WARF may be a bigger hurdle than Uncle Sam.
- by Beverly Nuckols on Sep 8, 2006 at 5:46 AM | link
Yes, having to rely on non-federal funding for ESCR does introduce some inefficiencies into the research process. Is that a price liberals should be willing to pay in order to remain true to the the principle of freedom of conscience? Or is liberalism no longer a matter of principle?
- by Bob Koepp on Sep 8, 2006 at 12:22 PM | link
What is happening here, is an intense politicization of science, which has many in the community acting like a special interest group using the techniques of deception, spin, and obfuscation to gain the day. That corrodes science, it doesn't support it.
Y'all who are willing to "support science" by seeking ot reverse Bush by any means necessary are like the General in Vietnam who claimed to have destroyed the village in order to save it.
- by Wesley J. Smith on Sep 8, 2006 at 4:09 PM | link
"Is that a price liberals should be willing to pay in order to remain true to the the principle of freedom of conscience?"
Should conservatives be willing to tolerate liberals refusing to fund religious charities based on freedom of conscience? Your argument is a non starter. What about unnessecary wars of liberation?
- by dan fan on Sep 8, 2006 at 9:36 PM | link
I'm confused by the concern about taxpayers.
Where do you think the federal government gets its money?
- by Laura(southernxyl) on Sep 8, 2006 at 11:00 PM | link
Wesley,
I think that comparing my post(or the actions of others in the community who disagree with the current federal policy on stem cell research) to the murder of innocent civilians during Vietnam could be considered deception, spin or obfuscation (it might even consist of all three).
Also, I should point out that providing factual evidence of the results of the current federal stem cell policy on state spending for the research is not really "intense politicization of science" -- one might even argue that it could not consist of politicization of science, since it is primarily an economic argument about the allocation of funding. Even so, do you have a problem with the main points? Do you disagree that the federal policy is forcing states to waste resources on duplicate equipment and infrastructure for stem cell research? Or do you argue that the federal policy has not slowed down stem cell research?
You may accept these facts as necessary evils because of your views on the morality of stem cell research, but that is entirely different than attempting to dismiss them through rhetoric rather than engaging in rational debate.
- by Sam Berger on Sep 13, 2006 at 12:33 PM | link
Sam: It is a friggin' metaphor. It means that science is being destroyed by actions that are supposed to be saving it. Good grief, man.
I don't support ESCR, as you well know. I think Bush's policy strikes the right balance.
- by Wesley J. Smith on Sep 18, 2006 at 4:23 AM | link