thank christ.

the ignorance of the detractors really amazes me. and that's hard to pull off.

3/9/2009 6:58:08 PM

To be fair, I think the biggest argument you'll get here is whether or not federal funding for such research be it for stem cells or cancer cures or any research, is an appropriate or constitutional way to spend taxpayer dollars. I personally think it ranks higher than federal education spending for effectiveness, but lower in effectiveness than, say, infrastructure spending, which we need right now.

I don't know who is left around here that opposes the mere moral concept of working with stem cells.

[Edited on March 9, 2009 at 7:01 PM. Reason : .]

3/9/2009 7:00:32 PM

i totally agree funding the research is a very low priority right now. i'm very thankful science and reason have returned to the white house.

3/9/2009 7:05:03 PM

The only stipulation I would put on federal funds for stem cell research is that when they find a cure for certain diseases with my tax dollars I get three free vials of whatever magic juice they come up with.

Of course, the sad reality is that Gates, Buffet, and anyone in their league will probably get the first vials of the stuff. And in the end, I'll have to end up paying an arm and a leg for 1/4 of a vial and I'll probably still die.

[Edited on March 9, 2009 at 7:38 PM. Reason : oops]

3/9/2009 7:34:39 PM

science and reason have returned to the white house? Is that why Obama rejected 30+ years of solid science behind Yucca?

don't give me that bullshit about "restoring science."

3/9/2009 8:14:52 PM

do you post many comments on blogs b/c i swear your posts always read like blog comments

and i know i posted this in another thread but being wrong on yucca mountain doesnt diminish the positive aspect, from a position of utility, of moving forward in medicine, on climate change, on how we approach the spread of HIV/STDs, and properly educate students on such issues as sex ed. i hope there's another way on nuclear energy, but there are other options (though none as good as that at this point. you can't win 'em all).

[Edited on March 9, 2009 at 8:37 PM. Reason : .]

3/9/2009 8:27:48 PM

nope. doesn't change the facts here. Obama nixed 30+ years of valid science because his buddy Harry Reid said to

3/9/2009 8:35:06 PM

this thread is about stem cells. let's talk about stem cells. what do you think of stem cells?

3/9/2009 8:42:29 PM

i think they is evul and must be eradicated!!!

btw, you can't back down like that, and you know it. If people are gonna keep saying "it's great to see science back," then I'll keep hammering them on it.

3/9/2009 8:44:08 PM

leave it up to you to divert a thread into a stupid argument. dont you have some flags to go throw at sidney lowe or something?

i wasn't the one who said this at first (i was actually sticking up for the libertarian perspective in my first post even if i dont entirely agree) but fine, i'll play in the dirt.

are you going to argue that science was more prevalent in a white house where stuff like this was encouraged? :

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/02/11/MNG7VO2LUV1.DTL

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26623-2004Dec1.html

actually, just go through here: http://www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/abuses_of_science/a-to-z-guide-to-political.html

he's wrong on yucca but that one thing alone isn't going to equal the ignorance of the past 8 years on everything from stem cells to climate change.

3/9/2009 8:52:30 PM

funny you bring up climate change. Seems to me that the things you claim are "ignoring science" are really just "things you don't agree with dubya on." Good work. Thanks for showing your true colors

3/9/2009 9:02:15 PM

Quote :

"funny you bring up climate change. Seems to me that the things you claim are "ignoring science" are really just "things you don't agree with dubya on." Good work. Thanks for showing your true colors"

the only people who believe climate change is real are people who are read all their news at DailyKos, yes. it's not like everyone in the fucking GOP primary last year save the total raisin cakes believed in that "myth" too, if we're looking at the politics of climate change.

yet another successful aaronburro production.

3/9/2009 9:09:07 PM

thanks for parroting the old line about there being no debate. It really proves my point.

3/9/2009 9:11:01 PM

there is debate over how destructive it could be, ranging from mildly annoying to catastrophic, as well as over whether it's worth spending money on over another priorities such as disease control, hunger, etc.

since this devolved into a trash talk thread after you decided to pull the "BUT YUCCA MT." crap in here, I'll continue the tradition by asking:

Q: why is it only people on the right who talk about climate change being a hoax?

A: because it's a conspiracy of the left (which apparently now includes most of the GOP), of course

[Edited on March 9, 2009 at 9:38 PM. Reason : .]

3/9/2009 9:31:09 PM

oh no's obama be tuk are aborted babies and future welfare recepients

3/9/2009 9:37:11 PM

Given the copious amounts of frivolous spending already associated with our federal government, spending money on stem cell research should be championed by all (aside from the obvious ones who think that baby Jesus will smite them for destroying cells). The Puritanical dogmatic approach is only going to cause the US to fall behind in the world.

3/9/2009 9:41:17 PM

you see, its all about control. they want to control everything to breed a new super generation of welfare babies and illegal immigrants who will vote for nancy pelosi in 2016 so we can complete the transition to socialism and brutally purge glenn beck for telling the truth.

3/9/2009 9:41:52 PM

^ LOLZOR

Quote :

"Given the copious amounts of frivolous spending already associated with our federal government"

should the gov't provide grant money to universities and fund particular stem cell research within private companies that has potential to provide good for the population as a whole?

YES

Should the gov't create a new state agency exclusively for stem cell research?

No

What differentiates this from any other research to which the gov't is usually the primary sponsor?

The only i can think of is some whiny Christians crying about pro-life and the rights of embryos that live on a peetree dish.



[Edited on March 9, 2009 at 9:53 PM. Reason : n]

3/9/2009 9:51:30 PM

which are otherwise going to be thawed and tossed in the medical waste bin

common sense escapes the pro-life, snowflake baby proponents.

from 2005:

Quote :

" Eighty-four families have adopted frozen embryos in this country. For some, like those who came to the White House in May, this is at least partly a political act; for others, it's a way to have a pregnancy and a child. But embryo adoption is now a dramatic side story to the intense debate surrounding the estimated 400,000 frozen embryos in the U.S. today."

3/9/2009 10:09:08 PM

I think the anti-embryonic research camp took a mortal blow from the Octo-Mom. Better having them embryos dead in the trashcan than implanted in another welfare mom.

3/9/2009 10:28:19 PM

Quote :

"Given the copious amounts of frivolous spending already associated with our federal government, spending money on stem cell research should be championed by all (aside from the obvious ones who think that baby Jesus will smite them for destroying cells). The Puritanical dogmatic approach is only going to cause the US to fall behind in the world."

Signed.

3/10/2009 2:07:02 PM

3/10/2009 2:13:46 PM

Quote :

"A top congressional Republican on Sunday criticized President Barack Obama's expected decision to reverse the Bush administration's limits on embryonic stem-cell research, calling it a distraction from the country's economic slump. Why are we going and distracting ourselves from the economy? This is job No. 1. Let's focus on what needs to be done," Rep. Eric Cantor, the Republican whip in the House of Representatives, told CNN's "State of the Union.""

Which is what? Try to block every effort the dems make? Screw these guys.

Quote :

""Frankly, federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research can bring on embryo harvesting, perhaps even human cloning that occurs," Cantor said. "We don't want that. That shouldn't be done. That's wrong.""

These guys kill me. "We shouldn't fund this research that could help tons of people because people might do something wrong that would have to be backed by other changes in the law and probably will never happen anyway." That's basically what they're saying. Actually, what they're saying is "we're either idiots, liars, or both, and we'll do anything to make it sound like we're trying to do something useful now that we're a useless minority party with no idea how to recover politically."

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/03/06/stem-cell-research-ftw/
Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer, has more:

Quote :

"With the EO, Obama will make it possible for medical researchers to have access to far more lines of stem cells, allowing them the freedom to see just how valuable these cells can be. Stem cell research is very promising in opening up our understanding of — and finding potential cures for — such diseases as Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, diabetes, and even cancer. We’re a long way from there, of course, but now researchers will get their chance to find these and other medical breakthroughs. You can read about the stem cell controversy if you’d like — I’m sure it will come up on the talking head shows, and I’m sure many of them will be spinning like pulsars trying to make this seem bad. But while I suspect a lot of the heads will talk about the destruction of human embryos for stem cell research, they won’t mention that these embryos — really just a tiny blob of cells numbering less than 150 in total — would have been destroyed anyway, since they were created for in vitro fertilization but wound up not being needed. Yet they never seem to protest the fertilization technique itself. It’s baffling. I’ll be very curious to see what will be said about all this on the blogs and in the news."

In other words, you almost never hear any complaints about in vitro, even though it destroys tons of embryos... but of course, that would require logic and critical thinking, not to mention going after an already established treatment. What these people do, it seems, is try to go after something before it's mainstream. Going after something like IVF would be politically stupid, though I'd argue going after stem cell research is, too. According to
http://www.docshop.com/education/fertility/treatments/in-vitro/statistics/
this site, By the end of 2002, nearly 300,000 babies conceived through assisted reproductive technology had been born. Considering the fact that several eggs are fertilized for each patient, that could mean that millions of embryos have either been destroyed or just plopped into a freezer after these treatments were complete, never to be seen again. Where's the outrage?

3/10/2009 3:11:01 PM

Quote :

"Where's the outrage?"

In fairness, the Catholic Church has been pretty upset about this phenomenon for this reason for a long time - long before the stem cell debate. I don't agree with their position, but I think it's fair to point out that they as an institution have been a fairly ideologically consistent opponent.

3/10/2009 3:32:58 PM

whether or not the federal government funds stem cell research or not, the previous bush order had some unintended consequences that needed to be corrected. basically if a lab had used federal funds for ANY equipment in a lab, then that equipment could have absolutely nothing to do with stem cell research (on new stem cell lines). i've read references to universities and research facilities having to build new facilities that were free of any federally-funded materials. now this may be overblown, but it seems like it was a silly restriction to put on science and one that has put us behind other countries in critical research.

3/10/2009 3:33:29 PM

^^that's why I said "almost never." In the media, and from most pro-life groups, it's abortion that gets the big thumbs down. I'd bet most pro-lifers don't even realize this detail about IVF.

3/10/2009 4:02:58 PM

Though they didn't initially see the link, there was a big push within the pro-life community to educate on this particular as well. I think they're moving to line up with the Catholics on this particular issue.

3/10/2009 4:07:11 PM

Waste.

Of.

Their.

Time.

Boy, if you think being anti-choice is bad, wait 'till they start protesting IVF clinics. Ha. That'll be fun - those people will have more money and power than those who are getting abortions and will NOT take kindly to that.

3/10/2009 4:16:17 PM

Aligning yourself with the Vatican is not the best idea when it comes to American politics.

3/10/2009 4:37:09 PM