Posted on 10/20/2005 6:17:41 PM PDT by furball4paws
http://www.waronscience.com/excerpt.php?p=1
Chapter 1: The Threat IN THE SUMMER OF 2001, long before his reelection and even before he became a "wartime president," George W. Bush found himself in a political tight spot. He responded with a morsel of scientific misinformation so stunning, so certain to be exposed by enterprising journalists (as indeed it was), that one can only wonder what Bush and his handlers were thinking, or whether they were thinking at all. The issue was embryonic stem cell research, and Bush's nationally televised claim—that "more than sixty genetically diverse" embryonic stem cell lines existed at the time of his statement—counts as one of the most flagrant purely scientific deceptions ever perpetrated by a U.S. president on an unsuspecting public. Bush's assertion, made on August 9, 2001, came as the president sought to escape a political trap of his own making. Campaigning in 2000, Bush told the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops that taxpayer money "should not underwrite research that involves the destruction of live human embryos." The statement threw a bone to Bush's pro-life followers, who view the ball of about one hundred fifty cells constituting a five-day-old embryo as deserving of the same moral and legal protections as fully developed human beings. Accordingly, these religious conservatives consider embryonic stem cell research—the study of excess embryos donated for research from in vitro fertilization clinics—ethically abhorrent. But some prominent Republicans, such as Utah senator Orrin Hatch, favored the research because of its scientific promise. As the issue came to a head in the summer of 2001, Bush publicly agonized over what to do. Finally, he opted for a supposed compromise: he would allow federal funding, but only for research on preexisting cell lines.
(Excerpt) Read more at waronscience.com ...
Your worst fears pingy.
I hope the left emotes itself to death.
The exerpt is from Mooney's book, but it is also part of the Seed article.
They aren't going to roll over. They must be squashed.
And if embryonic stem cells are so usefel why isn't it funded privately or funded much by the private sector? I would think if it was as valuable as the media is making it out to be then it showed be a goldmine for the private sector.
bump for later reading.....
I agree, generally, with you, but if you read the entire link you'll see that stem cells is just one thing and the Creationist/ID war on Evolution and the Dover trial also play a significant role.
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PLEASE NOTE:
The exerpt is from Mooney's book which is exerpted at the posted link. The article in Seed is by the same author and contains the same stuff in a more abbreviated form. In addition, the Seed article emphasizes the Creationist/ID attacks on Evolution and the Dover trial.
It could be the political fire over embryonic stem cells or the superior utility of adult and cord blood stem cells. Either or both could be good business reasons to pursue the course that the private sector has elected.
Creationism lite?
(Please ping me when "intelligent design" includes some real science, or when the Discovery Institute makes a discovery.)
Incidentally, Michael Fumento has an article about the further value of adult stem cells.
They have. They discovered how to get money out of the pockets of yahoos.
I never thought I'd see the day that conservatives attack conservatives...with leftist political agitprop.
They have "discovered" the soft underbelly of science -- that government schools are run by elected school boards, which are often made up of scientific illiterates -- real estate salesmen, funeral directors, dentists' wives, etc. By flim-flamming such sorry material, they can get the "controversy" into the curriculum, thus plunging our children into the abyss of ignorance.
A section of Conservatives are in a full assault on Science, which by its nature is apolitical. The Left will bash us with this. We need to know what's going on.
Oh. You think the left believes in science, in rationality? Have you missed the past 50 years of academic discourse? Have you not noticed that Heidegger and Focault and Derrida and the rest of the heroes of the left are anti-rationalists?
No? You mean you've swallowed this idiotic nonsense?
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