Obama to reverse stem cell research ban

[Balta1701]

One of our local media outlets last night interviewed this guy, who they identified as a UC Irvine prof. Before they did so, they showed a couple pictures of him, and I though "My God, how did they cure Michael J. Fox?"

[HuskyCaucasian]

One of our local media outlets last night interviewed this guy, who they identified as a UC Irvine prof. Before they did so, they showed a couple pictures of him, and I though "My God, how did they cure Michael J. Fox?"

I can see a mild resemblance, but not "OMG" type stuff.

[Balta1701]

I can see a mild resemblance, but not "OMG" type stuff.

Some of it was the camera angle I'm sure. Really freaked me out for a second.

[HuskyCaucasian]

Some of it was the camera angle I'm sure. Really freaked me out for a second.

ahh ok. yea, video might be different than a staged picture.

[BearSox]

Did you just compare being gay to being evil and wanting to kill people? There is a church in Kansas that you would like.

Nice twist job there.

 

I said some urges should not be acted upon. And I view homosexuality as one of them. I do not see one way where homosexuality is right. However, this is a discussion for another thread and we should stop it here.

[kapkomet]

Interesting.

 

http://www.chronicle-tribune.com/articles/...3d329352661.txt

 

Actually from the Washington Post oringally.

 

SYNDICATED COLUMN: Obama’s ‘scientific’ reasoning shallow

At least Bush acknowledged legitimate views

By Charles Krauthammer

Published: Friday, March 13, 2009 1:09 AM EDT

WASHINGTON — Last week, the White House invited me to a signing ceremony overturning the George W. Bush executive order on stem cell research. I assume this was because I have long argued in these columns and during my five years on the President’s Council on Bioethics that, contrary to the Bush policy, federal funding should be extended to research on embryonic stem cell lines derived from discarded embryos in fertility clinics.

 

I declined to attend. Once you show your face at these things you become a tacit endorser of whatever they spring. My caution was vindicated.

 

Bush had restricted federal funding for embryonic stem cell research to cells derived from embryos that already had been destroyed (as of his speech of Aug. 9, 2001). While I favor moving that moral line to additionally permit the use of spare fertility clinic embryos, Obama replaced it with no line at all. He pointedly left open the creation of cloned — and noncloned sperm-and-egg-derived — human embryos solely for the purpose of dismemberment and use for parts.

 

I am not religious. I do not believe that personhood is conferred upon conception. But I also do not believe that a human embryo is the moral equivalent of a hangnail and deserves no more respect than an appendix.

 

Moreover, given the protean power of embryonic manipulation, the temptation it presents to science and the well-recorded human propensity for evil even in the pursuit of good, lines must be drawn. I suggested the bright line prohibiting the deliberate creation of human embryos solely for the instrumental purpose of research — a clear violation of the categorical imperative not to make a human life (even if only a potential human life) a means rather than an end.

 

On this, Obama has nothing to say. He leaves it entirely to the scientists. This is more than moral abdication. It is acquiescence to the mystique of “science” and its inherent moral benevolence. How anyone as sophisticated as Obama can believe this within living memory of Mengele and Tuskegee and the fake (and coercive) South Korean stem cell research is hard to fathom.

 

That part of the ceremony, watched from the safe distance of my office, made me uneasy. The other part — the ostentatious issuance of a memorandum on “restoring scientific integrity to government decision-making” — would have made me walk out.

 

Restoring? The implication, of course, is that while Obama is guided solely by science, Bush was driven by dogma, ideology and politics.

 

What an outrage. George Bush’s nationally televised stem cell speech was the most morally serious address on medical ethics ever given by an American president. It was so scrupulous in presenting the best case for both his view and the contrary view that until the last few minutes, the listener had no idea where Bush would come out.

 

Obama’s address was morally unserious in the extreme. It was populated, as his didactic discourses always are, with a forest of straw men. Such as his admonition that we must resist the “false choice between sound science and moral values.” Yet, exactly 2 minutes and 12 seconds later he went on to declare that he would never open the door to the “use of cloning for human reproduction.”

 

Does he not think that a cloned human would be of extraordinary scientific interest? And yet he banned it.

 

Is he so obtuse not to see that he had just made a choice of ethics over science? Yet, unlike President Bush, who painstakingly explained the balance of ethical and scientific goods he was trying to achieve, Obama did not even pretend to make the case why some practices are morally permissible and others not.

 

This is not just intellectual laziness. It is the moral arrogance of a man who continuously dismisses his critics as ideological while he is guided exclusively by pragmatism (in economics, social policy, foreign policy) and science in medical ethics.

 

Science has everything to say about what is possible. Science has nothing to say about what is permissible. Obama’s pretense that he will “restore science to its rightful place” and make science, not ideology, dispositive in moral debates is yet more rhetorical sleight of hand — this time to abdicate decision-making and color his own ideological preferences as authentically “scientific.”

 

Dr. James Thomson, the discoverer of embryonic stem cells, said “if human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough.” Obama clearly has not.

[Reddy]

Interesting.

 

http://www.chronicle-tribune.com/articles/...3d329352661.txt

 

Actually from the Washington Post oringally.

interesting, but also written with an obvious slant, and the writer's opinion on the matter is very transparent.

[lostfan]

interesting, but also written with an obvious slant, and the writer's opinion on the matter is very transparent.

Yeah, I was going to say the same thing here. If Obama is going to allow the cloning of humans (he said he would not when he signed the statement), or look the other way when embryos are created just for the purpose of destruction, then yes, I have a problem with that. All of the other points the writer makes make it sound like sour grapes that Obama took a position he didn't like, a position which he makes completely obvious.

[kapkomet]

Yeah, I was going to say the same thing here. If Obama is going to allow the cloning of humans (he said he would not when he signed the statement), or look the other way when embryos are created just for the purpose of destruction, then yes, I have a problem with that. All of the other points the writer makes make it sound like sour grapes that Obama took a position he didn't like, a position which he makes completely obvious.

Well, you all know my stance. I said pretty much what you just did here, I just found it interesting that a WaPO (aka the Washington Compost) writer went out and blasted Obama. It doesn't happen very often.

[Balta1701]

I just found it interesting that a WaPO (aka the Washington Compost) writer went out and blasted Obama. It doesn't happen very often.

WHAT?

 

Really, Charles Krauthammer doesn't blast Obama?

 

What? Isn't it a little early to be that toasted?

 

And the Washington Post op-ed page, which recently also hired that wonderful (Godawful) writer Bill Kristol, doesn't blast Obama?

 

Really, I haven't the words for a quality response.

[kapkomet]

No, the WaPO doesn't. Not very often.

[Balta1701]

No, the WaPO doesn't. Not very often.

Washington Post Op-ed writers:

Anne Applebaum, Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute

 

David Broder, who wrote of Bill Clinton "He (Bill Clinton) came in here and he trashed the place and it wasn't his place". Dean of the Washington Press corps, represents to my eyes pretty much everything wrong with the press of the sort that Stewart keeps ranting about.

Richard Cohen, one of the supposed liberals, who was of course strongly in favor of the Iraq war.

 

EJ Dionne Jr., genuinely on my side.

 

Former George W. Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson, the man who wrote the "Axis of evil" speech.

 

Jim Hoagland, pulitzer prize winning reporter.

 

Richard Holbrooke, legit democrat, negotiated the Bosnian peace accords.

 

David Ignatius, left-leaning.

 

Robert Kagan, co-founder of the conservative PNAC (Project for the New American Century) that laid the groundwork for the entire Bush administration's foreign policy

 

Colbert King, probably counts as a Democrat.

 

Charles Krauthammer, strong Republican, regular Fox News guy, etc., already mentioned him.

 

Harold Meyerson, whom I've met.

 

Robert Novak was there until last fall when he took some time off writing due to a brain tumor.

 

Democrat Eugene Robinson

 

Economics columnist Robert J. Samuelson

 

God of the right wing and Cub fans George F. Will

 

And recent hire Bill Kristol, who's columns at the NY Times were an absolute debacle (almost every one seemed to provoke several corrections) and who's as big of a Bush apologist as there is out there.

 

So, for a paper that never puts in anything conservative, we have Bill Kristol, George Will, Charles Kruathammer, Robert Kagan, Michael Gerson, Anne Applebaum. Not counting either Novak or Broder that gives 6 solid hugely conservative writers. I count 5 solid left-leaning writers, maybe 6, depending on the day. I didn't classify Samuelson or Hoaglund, argue with me on that if you want. David Broder is considered a centrist, but he's a centrist only if centrists still like George W. Bush.

 

By my count, strong Republicans outnumber the strong democrats by at least a couple on the Washington Post op-ed staff. There's at least a Republican per day given that several of them have multi-day columns.

 

So, by "not very often" one can only conclude you mean that every column must be anti-Obama or the paper is a socialist rag (/kaperbole). Seriously, this is the game the media has played for years. They hire more and more Republicans while absolutely nothing is enough to convince people who don't bother to read the paper that they're no longer that evil liberal media, and so it just keeps getting played up.

[Balta1701]

Here is a great example. The Post decided to give its op-ed page tomorrow to a discussion of earmarks. The writers who discuss this issue:

The Post asked members of Congress and others whether federal budget earmarks are defensible. Below are contributions from The Post's Robert G. Kaiser, Sen. John McCain, American Enterprise Institute's Norman J. Ornstein, Rep. Ron Paul, the Concord Coalition's Charles S. Konigsberg, Rep. Jeff Flake and former deputy transportation secretary Mortimer L. Downey.

Basically...not a Democrat among them.

[kapkomet]

So their editorial page is playing "fair and balanced"? Ok. I honestly don't know them enough to say - so they've evidently changed.

 

[Balta1701]

So their editorial page is playing "fair and balanced"? Ok. I honestly don't know them enough to say - so they've evidently changed.

I will alter your statement one bit...the list I gave you is their Op-ed staff, the people who write on the opposite side of the editorial page. The editorial staff is a different group, they write the official paper editorials/endorsements/etc. (In my paper those are the unsigned editorials). Those are a different group of people, but I will add, I'm not a fan of that group and especially its work of the last 8 years (Drink!) either.

[kapkomet]

I will alter your statement one bit...the list I gave you is their Op-ed staff, the people who write on the opposite side of the editorial page. The editorial staff is a different group, they write the official paper editorials/endorsements/etc. (In my paper those are the unsigned editorials). Those are a different group of people, but I will add, I'm not a fan of that group and especially its work of the last 8 years (Drink!) either.

Gotcha. Now I see what you're saying.

[Texsox]

There is always a cost when we devalue human lives or begin placing relative values on one life over another. We already have a couple cures where a baby needs to be carried to full term, then later have body parts harvested so that both siblings may live. We have accepted that. I wonder how we will settle an ethical choice of terminating a life that was conceived to save another.

 

The choices are not as clear as they may seem. There is this humanity that separates us from animals, we seem to be doing are best to eliminate those differences.

[clyons]

I wonder how we will settle an ethical choice of terminating a life that was conceived to save another.

 

An interesting and extremely difficult moral question. However, one that is irrelevant to the subject of stem cell research.

[Texsox]

An interesting and extremely difficult moral question. However, one that is irrelevant to the subject of stem cell research.

 

That depends on how strict you wish to consider the issues. I prefer to take a macro view to see what overall direction society is taking and fit stem cell research into the overall picture. It is part of a whole, and to ignore the impact that stem cell research will have on the overall moral and ethical debate is short sighted. Basically a slippery slope that at the minimum, we need to tread carefully on.

[clyons]

That depends on how strict you wish to consider the issues. I prefer to take a macro view to see what overall direction society is taking and fit stem cell research into the overall picture. It is part of a whole, and to ignore the impact that stem cell research will have on the overall moral and ethical debate is short sighted. Basically a slippery slope that at the minimum, we need to tread carefully on.

I was considering the issue in the same general context of the thread: Obama's decision to reverse the Bush ban on federal funding in March 2009. The particular questions you raised, while important, really aren't a part of the same picture, unless its expanded into a different debate entirely.

 

We're in agreement if you oppose creating life for the sole purpose of destroying it, even if that is ultimately for the "greater good." I do too. But I don't think that issue is even on the same ethical plane here let alone the same slippery slope, and this funding reversal is a long, long way from opening that particular door. These stem cells already exist, for reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with pure research. Furthermore, left alone, they have virtually no chance of ever coming to term. That's a key distinction.

[EvilMonkey]

So, can someone explain this? Because I know it's all in the nuance soemhow. it's always different. Was this just a quick carrot to his backers who may have been heavily invested in this research, to raise the stocks enough to get out, then 'change his mind'?

http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/arti...px?RsrcID=44943

(CNSNews.com) - On Wednesday, only two days after he lifted President Bush’s executive order banning federal funding of stem cell research that requires the destruction of human embryos, President Barack Obama signed a law that explicilty bans federal funding of any "research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death."

 

The provision was buried in the 465-page omnibus appropriations bill that Obama signed Wednesday. Known as the Dickey-Wicker amendment, it has been included in the annual appropriations bill for the Department of Health and Human Services every fiscal year since 1996.

[StrangeSox]

Well, it say that the funds available in the "Omni-bus" package are off-limits. Where does the NIH get most of its funding from? It could be a non-issue.

[NorthSideSox72]

So, can someone explain this? Because I know it's all in the nuance soemhow. it's always different. Was this just a quick carrot to his backers who may have been heavily invested in this research, to raise the stocks enough to get out, then 'change his mind'?

http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/arti...px?RsrcID=44943

Looks like it fits in exactly with what Obama has said. Stem cell research is fine, with cells from already "discarded" or non-viable material, but you can't actually destroy life for that purpose.

 

Where is the issue here?

 

[StrangeSox]

Looks like it fits in exactly with what Obama has said. Stem cell research is fine, with cells from already "discarded" or non-viable material, but you can't actually destroy life for that purpose.

 

Where is the issue here?

 

To get embryonic stem cells, you have to destroy an embryo. This amendment prohibits funding of any research that destroys an embryo.

[NorthSideSox72]

To get embryonic stem cells, you have to destroy an embryo. This amendment prohibits funding of any research that destroys an embryo.

My understanding is that the you can only use embryos that are already "destroyed", or dead, or whatever term we want to use here. Therefore, you aren't destroying them FOR the research, which I think is the point.