Stem Cells: Arguing About the Wrong Things
There's been some recent debate about the whole stem cells thing. Once again, Obama is reversing something that Bush did during his tenure. The short version of the issue is that Bush placed restrictions that researchers could not receive federal funds to work with embryonic stem cells, however they could use existing lines (created before 8/9/01) for research.
The left clamored that this was a ridiculous restriction and would harm research potential, preventing or delaying serious progress to be made toward fighting such diseases as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. The right complained that using these cells was akin to taking a life and is wholly unethical.
Both sides went at it, and now that Obama has brought it back up they are going at it again. The problem is that they're arguing about the wrong things. The argument should be whether or not the government should fund the research at all.
My point is simply this: when this issue came up, the question was should the government fund this controversial stem cell research, but the only angles that were debated in Congress were 1) Is it ethical? 2) Can similar research be done on non-controversial stem cells, such as adult, etc.? 3) What will the research gain us? and so on. The much simpler questions that should have been asked before any of that was, "Should we even be funding this, regardless of the ethics involved? Can't this be taken up by the private sector? If we do fund this, can we even do it more efficiently than the private sector?" The questions as to its potential effectiveness at curing diseases can be debated separately, but if there is a real chance for that, you can rest assured that some private funds will spring up to investigate further, without the need for government interference
Both sides were incomplete in their questioning because they were using the situation to further their own political ideologies. The right voted against (and Bush was against it) because they were fundamentally against this type of research at a strictly ethical level. They didn't vote against because they thought the government shouldn't fund it at all. The left voted for it because they think the government should fund...well, everything.
I think when we confront these situations, the debate should be whether we need to stem the flow of federal money into these programs in the first place; let's leave political ideologies out of it.
Sorry, couldn't resist the pun.
3 comments:
From an incredible article in Discover Magazine about an even more incredible geneticist.
Lanza: "Four years ago I was driving to work, going up a hill on a quiet little road with a speed limit of 15 miles an hour. I was in a rush and whirled into the parking lot, and there’s this police cruiser next to me. I almost hit it. “Oh, jeez, now I’m screwed,” I thought. I went into my office, started working, and a few minutes later a scientist from the next office over comes in and says, “Bob, there’s a police officer out there who wants to see you. He has handcuffs and a gun.” The whole lab is thinking he’s there to arrest me. He says, “Dr. Lanza, could I speak to you in your office?” so I brought him in. It turns out that I had just published a paper showing that we could create human retinal pigment epithelial cells capable of restoring visual function in animals. The officer had a 16-year-old son who would go totally blind in two years without the therapy. By the time he finished his story, I was almost in tears because we had these cells and they had been frozen at that point for nine months."
Discover:" Why couldn’t you take them out of storage to help the boy?"
Lanza : "We didn’t have $20,000, which is what we needed to do the preclinical studies required for working with people. At that point, our phones had been turned off. We didn’t have a fax machine. I couldn’t even afford bottled water for my pipettes. The point is, there is just no funding because basic research is generally funded by the government and the government will not fund stem cell work."
Discover: "What else are you storing, still unfunded, in the vault?"
Lanza : "We have cells that reverse paralysis in sheep that have spina bifida and can’t walk. After we injected our cells, the first animal that we treated returned to normal and was walking fine. The same model could work for paralyzed humans, but without funding, we haven’t been able to repeat the experiment in five years. People are in wheelchairs when there could be a cure.
A few years ago a woman contacted me. In the course of chemotherapy for a tumor, something must have been activated, and for some unknown reason the glial cells in her cerebellum had started to degenerate. She was a lady with all these kids. Slowly she started to lose her ability to talk. She began to use a walker. She got worse and worse, and then, not long ago, she died."
Discover : "You could have helped her?"
Lanza: "Yes, we have cells that probably could have helped her with a single injection. One of her sons kept coming and asking, “Is there anything you can do?” But we didn’t have the resources to go through the process at the FDA. It’s heart wrenching to see this happening, knowing that this work is being held up."
Read the whole article here...
http://discovermagazine.com/2008/sep/19-fighting-for-the-right-to-clone/article_view?b_start:int=3&-C=
sounds like their company did a poor job of trying to attract capital. those therapies probably wouldn't end up being cheap so it seems there would be plenty of incentive for investment in the research.
I get your point, Troy, but an argument could be made that if the government wouldn't have gotten into the funding business to begin with, private funding might have been sought out first, rather than initially going to government funding.
I noticed he said "basic research" which is, in and of itself, a very specific 'thing'. Basic research, by definition, is generally thought to be so general as to not be profitable, and thus does not generate many financially interested partners from the private sector. However, as one could surmise, this basic research is essential to understanding how things work and in getting more specific projects off the ground.
Now, all that being said, government only funds a little over half of all basic research, so his 'generally funded' comment seems a bit of a stretch. However, in my opinion it's rather irrelevant since what he's talking about doesn't really seem to be basic research at all. It seems to be more specifically targeted and most definitely looks to be a very profitable venture. I'm left to assume either the research isn't that promising (i.e. doesn't look to generate income), or, like TB, they didn't try hard enough (possibly because they depended too much on government funding).
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