New Technique Devised For Human Stem Cells
Scientists in Massachusetts reported yesterday that they have developed a new means of growing human embryonic stem cells, the versatile cells that show promise as treatments for various diseases.
Interesting, as this bears on how many of the nominally-approved hESC lines in 2001 turned out to be corrupted by the mouse cells in those lines. However, while the ESCR people fiddle around with parameters for *in vitro* work , we are seeing the real deal with adult stem cells. I know this is something of a broken record on this issue, but so is the media. At least I’m a broken record on the facts. 😉
Take a hypothetical situation: If you were a real estate developer, and the contractor building your homes came to you and bragged about a big breakthrough–they dug a whole foundation that day!–while the other developer had people *moving into* his subdivision, wouldn’t it be time to fire your contractor?
People invoke progress and the inevitable march of scientific knowledge when they try to sucker the public into supporting ESCR. But if it’s so inevitable, why are the ESCR advocates spending their time kicking and screaming for state and federal money in lieu of getting FDA approval for human trials, as their adult stem cell counterparts are doing? If this field is so robust, why does it always need legislative life support and tender loving care and protection from those evil Christian luddites? And always, more money. We’ve seen several advanced countries dive into this research head-first (e.g., the U.K., South Korea and Singapore), so even in countries where the opprobium against government funding for this research doesn’t exist, we don’t see magic happening.
This does not mean that ESCR won’t deliver significant results in the future–I’d be surprised if it didn’t, though I doubt it’ll do anything clinically that we will not be able to do better with other methods–but perhaps some of its advocates should tone down their rhetoric about its tremendous benefits, and the huge disservice its opponents are doing by blocking funding for it. The evidence does not seem to justify such inflammatory means.
But what is science if we give up on a line of research that clearly has some scientists fascinated, simply because some other line of research is doing what we the public want? Science will always be more robust if it is driven by the curiosity of the scientists, and not by the fickleness of the market or the non-scientist public.
Perhaps it would be more honest (and have deeper resonance with your audience) if you stopped disapproving of ESCR on the basis of comparison with ASCR, and simply stuck with disapproving of ESCR because of the alleged ethical issue.
Your contracting metaphor doesn’t really play out because contractors are hired to perform a known, repeatable process with fairly standard techniques. People who aren’t competent will be flushed out quickly and easily. Stem cell research, however, is cutting-edge stuff where different approaches are still being tested. Just because one approach has yielded more short-term results does not mean the other approach is not worthwhile or invalid. You do point that out, though, and I think it weakens your argument. If the problem is whether a particular technique is useful, and you admit that the difference might simply be one of short-term versus long-term, then what’s the problem? Is it purely financial?
Why do you really oppose ESCR? Because it is not currently fruitful, or because you have a moral problem with it? If I recall some of your older posts, it’s because you have a moral problem with it. So why not stick with that? It’s a more secure line of argument, even if it’s not an ultimately soluble one. (I.e., I think it’s perfectly possible that people could be debating the ethics of ESCR indefinitely, simply because the basic moral reactions of the public to this research are genuinely diverse.)
I think the point that Jerry is trying to make is that ESC are just so much snake oil – very expensive and time-consuming snake oil. Those enthusuastic about ESCR over-sell it. Obviously, folks like Jerry and I find ESCR to be morally unacceptable. However, there’s nothing wrong with using other concerns to prevent the government to spend money on it. Why waste taxpayer money on something that *might* produce results when there’s already something that *does* produce results? Think of it this way. If I want someone to stop smoking, the chief reason is health. That doesn’t mean I can’t point out cosmetic issues like bad breath and yellow fingers in order to accomplish my goal.
I’m not going to go one way or the other on simple majorities. In some respects, I like them and think they’re fantastic. In other respects, I don’t.
In regards to stem cells, I think the situation in California as compared to federal circumstances just happens to be an interesting “laboratory.” A majority of California voters, when the question was put on a ballot, supported stem cell research. Would the same be true at the federal level? Unfortunately, we will never know, and the issue will continue to be confounded by factions and ideology. Would it be better if there were a federal referendum and everybody got a say in the matter? Maybe. But I suspect that no matter which way that vote went, the controversy wouldn’t go away. What happens in California remains to be seen. Already there is some grumbling about how the research commission is being run. We shall see.
If morally is how you would prefer to argue it, and how you think the argument is stronger, then I think you should argue it that way. As General Grant told his underlings during the last year of the Civil War, don’t spend your time worrying about what the enemy will do, but about what you will do.
However, I should point out that from my perspective the moral argument is almost completely empty, because I have never experienced any moral revulsion to using human embryos for research, or human cloning, or any of those other things that are supposed to freak me out. To get around that, you’ll have to argue the rather offensive line that people like me are somehow defective in our moral reasoning.
On the other hand, I completely understand and agree with the argument that it’s unfair to make people pay for something they do not approve of. However, when democracy leaps into action, as it did in California, people who don’t support ESCR have little other choice than to accept the rule by majority or to begin their own campaign to change the situation. But, as I also mentioned, this will never happen at the federal level. What if a majority of ordinary Americans do want to use federal money for ESCR (or if a majority of voters would support it), and the program is obstructed by a vocal minority, simply because there is no structure for a federal referendum? That’s not quite fair or just, either, and why many of us would rather see federal politics shorn of religion and ideology altogether. Let the masses decide, and not a few religious lobbyists or “personalities.”
But this, of course, is why those few religious lobbyists and “personalities” are trying so desperately to make scientists out to be just as ideological as they themselves are. If they can successfully argue that everyone on every side of the debate is equally ideologically driven, then they can open the government up to their own version of blatantly ideological and religious legislating and make the separation of church and state meaningless. This fits their philosophy, of course, that religion (i.e., ideology or other forms of religious thought) is everywhere and insuperable from affairs of state or science or anything else. Once we’re all wrapped in their murky, sweaty, sticky world of abstract ideology, it’s nothing but an irrational free-for-all, and anybody claiming to have any kind of religious or ideological perspective will have just as much weight in the public forum as anybody with a pragmatic or rationalist one, and moral or ethical reasoning won’t mean a thing. It’ll just be “I’m louder than you are,” or “My God is more wrathful than your god.”
But now I’m just rambling, and many others throughout the history of our nation have made much better arguments for secular government than I have (or can). 😉
My impression has always been that, ideally, simple majorities, or even pluralities, are supposed to run the show as long as the rights of the minority are respected and kept.
My point isn’t that our federal government is run by simple majorities, or even that it should be, but that no matter how we organize our politics, there will be defects in justice.
The Chinese claim to have repaired a spinal chord with embrionic stem cells and gotten someone back up and walking. But I don’t know if that has been verified to any acceptable degree.
Theo,
Our goverment isn’t run by simple majorities. If it was, there’d be no Senate.
Theo, I would be willing to fund long-shot but ethical science. I tried to focus this article as a plea for greater honesty in presenting the science. Folks overplay ESCR’s value, and try to make out its opponents as those who would forsake the suffering of the patients. I would love nothing better than keeping the debate on a moral level, without muddying the waters by wheeling out Reeve (while he was still with us–may he rest in peace) or Michael J. Fox and trying to manipulate people’s feelings.
Theo, that something is wrong doesn’t mean that we must feel revulsion. Much human suffering seems distant to me, and perhaps, thanks to the media, I am numb to things that *should* revolt me. But it is still wrong. Embryos often feel absract to me, but I think that destroying them is bad, and so I work to explain that viewpoint to people, and to show(manipulations aside, as per our previous conversation) that we need not sacrifice anything essential for ourselves either.
You can’t convince someone that something is wrong if they don’t have some kind of resonance with or personal interest in your position. Trying to convince me that ESCR is wrong because it destroys human embryos would be akin to trying to convince me that antibiotics are wrong because they destroy bacteria, or trying to convince me that “The Gates” in Central Park was great art, or that Donald Trump has a really lovely hairdo. It’s just what I see. You can’t go around telling people that they their own perceptions are wrong and that they should feel bad about something, just because you say so. That’s just guilt, and it’s not the same as true conviction.
You pointed out the California referendum in such a way as to imply that direct democracy is the way to go. That sounds like an endorsement of simple majorities to me. I’m no poli-sci expert, but what little I know suggests that our founding fathers scrupulously avoided creating a government run by simple majorities. There are checks and balances that hopefully stop the occasional popular bad idea from taking hold.
You would still have a stronger argument if ESCR was known and expected only to produce particular results, specifically the ones we’re seeing in ASCR. As the great philosopher Donald Rumsfeld said, there are known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns. I.e., there might be fruits to ESCR which are as yet unknown or even unimagined.
The fiscal argument against the use of public money is entirely separate from the moral one, though. Would you support the use of public money on a research field that lacked a similar ethical dimension, but still had the same long-shot feel?
Meanwhile, here in California, voters approved the use of public money for ESCR, while public opinion at the federal level will probably never be known, because the power do choose lies with the legislative branch (and is currently being pushed around pretty hard by the executive branch). There is no national analogue to the California process whereby the public itself got to decide. So the issue will always be made murkier by the ideologies of the elite (e.g., George W. Bush) and the convoluted politics of the few elected representatives.
However, it still really comes down to the moral argument, because even if you oppose the use of public money for some scientific research but not all, then you must be using some criterion to decide which research should get the money. In this case, it is the moral/ethical argument against the use of human embryos for research.