Leaving major problems up to the private sector to solve rarely works. That why States formed entities such as the Tennessee Valley Authority to build dams and hydroelectric plants. Rather than wait for the power industry to get around to doing it. The Panamal Canal project was another example of something not accomplished by the private sector. As well as our nations highways, bridges, waste water treatment plants, etc.

And Small Pox wasn’t wiped out by the private sector either. So don’t hold your breath, relying on the private sector to do anything useful with Stem Cells, for the good of all mankind. All they’ll do is file patents. And sue anyone who does. The 21st Century is being held hostage by corporate greed. And Congress is allowing this because they’ve got great stock options, or vice prez jobs lined up with them.

>an opportunity to make their possible contribution to stem cell research >illegal. By executive order. And a signing statement.

Not sure how that works..I know Bill Clinton’s chief of staff said,”stroke of the pen, law of the land, kinda cool,” but it still takes an act of congress to make something illegal.

Leave it to the private sector and all we’ll get is better breast implants. Which is fine but leaves a lot of things undone. If we want anything that will improve health in a meaningful way we need public funding. No major medical breakthrough has ever occurred in the private sector, I don’t expect any to happen now.

I have no problem with that so long as the resulting superhero mutant spinach man fights on the side of good.

RBG

Meanwhile, Bush has no problem signing he possible death sentence of thousands of 19 and 20 year old embryos that serve in the military. Unborn embryos have more protective rights, than teenagers. The government won’t use tax money to experiment on embryos, but use it to fund all kinds of experiment recruitment programs.

And finally, the government pumps billions in the space program, under the guise of finding cures to diseases in earth orbit. But then stops short of funding anything that even smells a little hinky, when it comes to research on the ground. That’s so hypocritical, that it stinks!

What is the government/religious position on all the extra zygotes or embryos that are created in fertility clinics or frozen? Can they be destroyed?

As far as I know, they ignore the issue completely. See clod said ‘be fruitful and multiply’ or was it god said ‘be useful and multiplex’? To disallow the destruction of these particular embryos might stop people that are biologically incapable of breeding from obeying zhod or someone.

So, they sweep the fertilized eggs under the rug and hope no one notices. I’d like mine over easy with a side of bacon please.

Actually, I’m guessing that if they allowed stem cell research from these but not from other embryos, someone might notice that not all life prior to birth was being treated equally, which it isn’t and which is fine with me.

What do you do when you have to deal with a continuous spectrum of life that ranges from a spot of DNA chemical to the birth of a child? he asked rhetorically.

Surprisingly, there is something I don’t know & maybe someone can enlighten me:

What is the government/religious position on all the extra zygotes or embryos that are created in fertility clinics or frozen? Can they be destroyed?

Would they condone destroying an illegal zygote made by cloning?

Do they even consider life made from, say, nose cells to be human life?

Would they have any problem injecting a human gene into a spinach plant?

RBG

The money for almost all research comes in the form of government grants. It would be almost impossible to fund this type of research in the private sector (we are talking billions of dollars).

The private sector has no trouble funding research into male erectile dysfunction or female breast augmentation. They have no trouble launching global marketing campaigns for designer cell phones. Apple seems to have plenty of cash to create trendy new gadgets. New shopping malls still get built. We tear down perfectly good old stadiums and erect new stadiums so musclebound millionaires can play football.

My point is that the private sector is rich. As a society we simply have made bad decisions about our priorities.

Our tax dollars should fund research. So should private dollars. And maybe a few vanity projects should be sacrificed for the greater good.

I’ll donate my kids for research.

This is simply a way of him to justify the elimination of research that disagrees with his base voters (not him). It won’t matter, however, because the next president will likely restore funding to all so-called controversial research projects.

You’re right. The government should save that money for important uses like subsidizing oil companies and corporate welfare. Then we can all pretend we live in a free market economy. Really, we do, right?

#1 – Mike B.,

When the government says that tax money may not be used for research, they put a huge burden on anyone doing that research. It means that they can choose to either not take any research grants or they must account for every penny in such an onerous way that it becomes impractical to do anything other than keep the records.

For example, if you have a box of pencils. Some may be used to write the results of government funded research. Some may be used to write the results of stem cell research. No wait. That’s illegal.

If you have an incubator that you bought on a government funded research partly with government money and want to do stem cell research, even if that incubator is only currently used for an hour a day and would have increased usage to two hours a day, you must buy a second incubator with private money for your stem cell research.

When the government signs these policies, they are well aware that they are essentially stopping many facilities from engaging in the research. That is the primary goal. And, yes, it’s both religious and stupid since there are so many embryos already being thrown away after in-vitro fertilization anyway.

Further, since this has the potential to save lives and will merely make use of embryos already being thrown away, even religious fanatics cannot logically argue that in denying this they are being “pro-life”. Instead, they are voicing a belief that life begins at conception and ends at birth.

Why should the government be funding this research in the first place? Let the private sector invest in the R&D costs, obtain patents, sell the products on the market, and make tons of money. Consumers can than be free to choose if they want to consume products that are derived from stem-cell research.
This is a clear example of the federal government following the legacy of the New Dealers in providing a public “benefit” instead of a public good. The President should have vetoed the bill not on some lame moral reason, but because the government is engaged in activities that could easily be undertaken by the private sector. Cut all the funding and give me a tax break.