NYTimes Editorial: Loosening The Stem Cell Binds

[Hissyspit]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/13/opinion/13fri1.html?hp

Loosening the Stem Cell Binds

Published: April 13, 2007
The Senate easily approved a bill this week that would free embryonic stem cell research from the worst shackles imposed by the Bush administration. The House passed its version earlier. A substantial majority of Americans tell pollsters they support embryonic stem cell research. Yet one man, President Bush, and a minority of his party, the religious and social conservatives, are once again trying to impose their moral code on the rest of the nation and stand in the way of scientific progress.

Mr. Bush is threatening a veto, and neither house had enough votes for the bills on initial passage to override him. Concerned voters will need to ratchet up the pressure on recalcitrant Republicans to help stop the president from killing the second enlightened stem cell bill in less than a year.

Under the president’s current policy, federal funds can be used to support research on only some 20 stem cell lines that have limited scientific value. Many of the lines are deteriorating or contaminated, and the group as a whole lacks the diversity needed to conduct a wide range of studies. There is no doubt that progress is being hampered. The director of the National Institutes of Health, who had initially been a good soldier in trying to live within the president’s policy, told the Senate last month that American science would be better served if the nation let researchers have access to more stem cell lines.

The restrictions on federal financing have led to absurdly complicated and costly maneuvers. Scientists are forced to buy extra equipment and laboratory space with private money to perform off-limits research while using equipment and supplies bought with federal money on the permitted stem cell research. In a shocking example cited during Senate debate, a California researcher who had been cultivating stem cells in a makeshift privately financed lab suffered a power failure but was unable to transfer her lines into industrial-strength freezers in another lab because they were federally financed. Two years of work melted away because of this inanity.

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[TZ]

1. yes and the GOP keep lying about the "plentiful"

stem cell lines that they currently fund. Many of those lines are contaminated. My understanding is of the 20 lines available its only like 7 or 8 that are viable and that the waiting list to get access is so long that a lot of time has been wasted over who has access to what lines for whatever length of time. Meanwhile the private companies (many in California with its pro stem cell funding) are finding that the costs of doing the research on the stem cells are too high for them to either start or continue with it. Its ridiculous that in this country a bunch of small embryonic cells seem to have more value than adults suffering with very debilitating diseases. Culture of life=Culture of suffering.

[blondeatlast]

2. The whole "snowflake baby" thing is so perverted I call it obscene.

They'd rather have funerals for them than allow them to give life.