Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Stem Cell Ban: Has the House Gone Mad?

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by

James A. Bacon
in

Bob Gibson with the Charlottesville Daily Progress points to an alarming sideline conflict between the Senate and House budget negotiators in the General Assembly. House Republicans have inserted budget language that would ban funding for “any entity” — including the University of Virginia and Virginia Commonwealth University — “that conducts human stem cell research.”

Two UVa professors of neurological surgery — Roy C. Ogle and Gary K. Owens — are conducting embryonic stem cell research in the areas of bone regeneration and smooth muscle research. Ogle, says Gibson, is an expert in skull reconstructive surgery.

Gibson relies upon Del. Brian J. Moran, D-Alexandria, who denounces the House action as “irresponsible,” as at least one of his sources, so it’s conceivable that we’re not getting the full story. But if the account is substantially accurate — and Gibson seems to be a reliable reporter — I find the House action mystifying. Even President George W. Bush’s “ban” of stem cell research prohibits only the federal funding of stem cell research, and it allows exemptions for pre-existing lines of stem cells. Apparently, the House budget language would go beyond prohibiting the application of state funds for stem cell research and — can this possibly be true? — would eliminate all state support for the universities outright.

If such budget language were enacted, UVa and VCU could not possibly absorb the loss of state funding, so they would have no choice but to kill the research programs. That’s called extortion. The stem cell ban is also… how shall I put this delicately… not an astute move politically.

By positioning the House far to the right of President Bush on the stem cell issue, such punitive budget language would hand the state Senate an issue which to flay the House in the budget negotiations — look how out of control these guys are! — and the Democrats an issue with which to flay the GOP at the polls. The stem-cell measure needs to be deep-sixed as quickly as possible before the story goes mainstream and creates a debacle.

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23 responses to “Stem Cell Ban: Has the House Gone Mad?”

  1. James Atticus Bowden Avatar
    James Atticus Bowden

    I’d be surprised if it reads ‘human stem cell research’ rather than ‘human embryonic stem cell research’. Look forward to finding out what is what.

  2. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Like most of the dogma espoused by the far right, the attempt to ban stem cell research is legislative hypocrisy.

    If God is the creator of all life, why don’t we go ahead and cut funding for genetic research on plants and animals? Why stop at human stem cells? After all, the GA has been funding such research at state universities for decades.

    No one can argue the tremendous gains that have resulted from genetic research on plants and animals, just ask your local farmers.

    If the Republican’s lose the majority they don’t have anyone to blame but themselves.

  3. Scott Avatar
    Scott

    They have been mad for quite some time.

    Did you just overlook the Republican hotheads attempts to “go right” of the radical Bush on immigration issues?

    Meanwhile the Iraqi war continues to waste lives and money…

  4. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    In answer to your question, YES. The anti-intellectual, “Know Nothing” takeover of a once great political party is just about complete, as the next election will demonstrate. If you don’t hate gays, fear wetbacks, read Genesis literally and sleep in a house filled with automatic weapons, there is no place for you in the current Republican Party. The problem is that the Democrats have their own problems, but if they can control their own looney element they are in for a couple of fat years. A third party would clean up.

  5. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    This doesn’t surprise me at all – and shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows what the right wing wingnuts in the Virginia GOP are capable of. My concern is, when faced with this, the writer’s first response is terror that the GOP’s actions will help elect Democrats. Is that really the worst thing that can happen given the kind of leadership we’ve seen from this bunch? I know Bacon’s is conservative but I didn’t think it was so obviously partisan. And I’m not sure what kind of standards it has if this is the kind of leadership it wants.

  6. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    My question is does it ban stem cell research or embryonic stem cell research? There is a big difference. While I agree that stem cell research is great embryonic stem cell research is not. Leaving out all the drama about taking a human life, studies have shown research done with embryonic stem cells is not effective. The embryonic stem cells do not accurately reflect the human body and often cause the results to be inaccurate. Because embryonic stem cells are more delicate than adult stem cells they also require more equipment, resulting in more money, to do the research. When the research is not accurate there is no point in spending the money on it. We should stick to regular stem cells that are more accurate for research and less costly.

  7. Bob Gibson in Charlottesville Avatar
    Bob Gibson in Charlottesville

    The budget language (cited below) bans human embryonic stem cell research and defunds entities that conduct such research.
    Here is the precise language in the House version of the budget:
    Page 485, after line 9, insert:
    “d. No funding in this budget may be provided to any entity that conducts
    human stem cell research from stem cells obtained from human embryos, or for
    conducting such research; however, research conducted using stem cells other
    than embryonic stem cells may be funded.

    e. No funding in this budget, or matching funds related to funding included
    in this budget, may be provided for research on cells or tissues derived
    from induced abortions on humans.”

  8. Bob Gibson in Charlottesville Avatar
    Bob Gibson in Charlottesville

    Let me correct the post above. It merely defunds those entities that do that type of research. It does not ban entities that do not receive any state funds from doing the research.

  9. Charles Avatar
    Charles

    I agree with clause “e”, and would agree with “d” if it merely prohibited state funds from being used for the research.

    I think it goes to far for the state to deny funds to a school simply because the school has a research project doing stem cell research.

    That is what negotiations are for, I think the Senate could easily get this modified as part of the negotiations.

  10. Barnie Day Avatar
    Barnie Day

    These morons think they have the corner on God’s will.

  11. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    funds for …. RESEARCH

    hmmm… let’s cut funding for Research into Global Warming… we certainly don’t want to delve into that topic.. we might find something out we don’t like.

    Here we have the “see no evil” school of education.

    Let’s determine PRIOR to research that we’ll not learn anything as a result of that research.

    Why in the world… would anyone want to tell scientists to NOT try to find out more about a subject of interest to human beings – or one that possibly could yield such important information as to ultimately benefit mankind?

    Thank GOD (yes) that there are places in the rest of the world where scientists CAN find out.

    What a concept. We argue about outsourcing our jobs… let’s outsource common sense while we are at it AND let others in the world become the leaders in Medical Knowledge and the jobs it would bring.

    🙂

  12. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Too late, Larry, have you been in a hospital lately? It used to be they came here to train. Now they are trained elsewhere before the come here to get rich because too many of our own kinds are too dumb or too lazy for medical and nursing school. If we didn’t have restrictive licensing requirements that refuse to recognize perfectly valid foreign schools, the flood would double.

  13. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Horrible typo. Too many of our own kids.

  14. James Atticus Bowden Avatar
    James Atticus Bowden

    I love Liberal moral outrage for the Holy Grail of Research (Hallowed by thy laboratories). So, research is sacrosanct, huh?

    When black men in Alabama with syphillis were divided into groups that were given experimental medicines and placebos, that was research. When the researchers let disease progress in the black men with the placebo – unto death – the researchers learned a lot about syphillis. They gained knowledge that saved other human lives.

    So, the principle of knowingly sacrificing human life to someday, maybe, save some human lives is okay in Liberal theology if it is ‘research’.

    Never mind the absence of success with embryonic human stem cells and growing success with adult human stem cells. The lack of compelling scientific need to kill the human in its earliest stages – part of a continuum of life that can’t be avoided for all humans – doesn’t trump the principle for Liberals that it should be done for ‘research’.

  15. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “too many of our own kids are too dumb or too lazy for medical and nursing school.”

    I don’t know about medical schools but nursing schools have to turn away many students because there aren’t enough nursing teachers. The US should be more concerned about educating US citizens than in bringing in students from outside of the US.

    Today’s college students have to rely more and more on loans instead of grants and US businesses are not training their employees as they used to. Want a XYZ programmer? Don’t bother to send the ABC programmer that you already have in for training – bring in an H-1B! Have the ABC programmer train the H-1B on your business and IT rules then let the ABC programmer go. It’s become the American way!

    Deena Flinchum

  16. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “So, research is sacrosanct, huh?”

    Beating up straw men doesn’t make you any tougher. And when you come out of the fight with scrapes and bruises yourself, well, that’s just sad.

    “The lack of compelling scientific need to kill the human in its earliest stages – part of a continuum of life that can’t be avoided for all humans – doesn’t trump the principle for Liberals that it should be done for ‘research’.”

    No matter how many tortured attempt to justify the you try, it just isn’t going to work. If faced with a choice between saving, out of a burning fertility clinic, a vat full of a billion fertilized human embryos and a single human child, even you’d pick the child every time.

    There is a legitimate range of debate over the moral status of fetuses and abortion. But at the stage of zygotes, we’ve slid into pure ridiculousness. Zygotes have no nervous systems, no concerns, no feelings, and they never have had any and there isn’t even the tiniest shred of debate over whether they do or not. They are as different from persons as anything can be and still be alive: cows have more feelings than the zygotes of any species.

    With the advent of cloning techniques, every skin cell in my body could be induced to grow into another individual… or two, or three. Zygotes themselves are not tiny people or even the blueprints for people: they are a set of instructions for how to go about building a human being… but those instructions have NOT YET BEEN CARRIED OUT. Given that zygotes can later develop into MORE than a single person, the idea that they themselves are individuals is absurd.

  17. James Atticus Bowden Avatar
    James Atticus Bowden

    Anon: Nice try to make humans in their first days less human.

    No argument that the fertilized human egg looks like a wriggly cell, then two, then four, etc under the microscope. Not nearly as cute as a puppy.

    But those cells become a human being. Only if you kill them in the process of their development will they stop from becoming a human being.

    So, deny the humanity of humans when they are a collections of cells, but you can’t deny that is part of the continuum of human life, you can only demean it so it is okay to kill it.

  18. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “Anon: Nice try to make humans in their first days less human.”

    They are _genetically_ human, which is to say that they contain a set of instructions of chemical processes to carry out that, if they do so, will often result in the construction of a human being. But to reduce morality to mere genetics is to miss the point of morality entirely. What the genes of something are is irrelevant. If a being that looked, acted, and functioned as a human being does, but had no underlying human DNA as its substructure existed, it would deserve the same rights and protections as anyone else. That’s because the point of morality is to protect actual beings, not merely tortured abstract definitions.

    “No argument that the fertilized human egg looks like a wriggly cell, then two, then four, etc under the microscope. Not nearly as cute as a puppy.”

    Whether or not its cute is irrelevant. It in no way functions anything like any sort of being for which we developed our concepts of killing, of rights, and so on. There is no nervous system for goodness sakes.

    Furthermore, to say that is a person is simply false. Down the road, it could be divided into two persons. Or three. Or it could simply be kept alive indefinately and NEVER develop into a person, without being killed. All of these are future possibilties for the zygote. How can any of those be if, as you insist, it IS a singular individual?

    “But those cells become a human being.”

    They can, but they haven’t yet. Theoretically, now any cell in my body can become another human being with the right chemical trigger. But… they haven’t done so yet. A zygote is one causal step in a chain of events that can lead to the development of a human being if everything works out a certain way. But while there is no easy way to draw a bright line as to when something has developed to the point where it has functional capacities relevant to rights to life, it’s pretty clear that cells that are functionally no different than skin cells do not have such capacities.

    “Only if you kill them in the process of their development will they stop from becoming a human being.”

    If I don’t have sex with the next woman I see, we get the exact same result: a human being that could have developed will not. That isn’t the same thing as the murder of a person.

    “So, deny the humanity of humans when they are a collections of cells, but you can’t deny that is part of the continuum of human life, you can only demean it so it is okay to kill it.”

    The idea that a collection of cells requires the same rights as a fetus simply makes no sense, and you’ve provided no argument other than to insist that it is genetically human, which isn’t a itself any sort of moral argument. Drawing up blueprints for the world trade center is part of the continuum of their construction. But crumpling up the blueprints and tossing them away is not the same thing as 9/11. The architects that competed in the contest to rebuild are not all guilty of detroying buildings because their plans were tossed before construction even began.

    You can call a zygote human all you want (but only using the most empty definition of what it means to be human: “genetically”), but the fact is that a worm is more like a human being than a zygote. To care about protecting a cell before worrying about the rights of beings that can feel and experience (like animals) is to simply miss entirely the point of morality: to have priorities that bear no relation to anything at all. It is to see morality as a set of empty literalized rules with no meaning or purpose to them other than to be followed.

  19. James Atticus Bowden Avatar
    James Atticus Bowden

    Anon: A worm can never be a human. Only the human zygote can be a human. All humans were once human zygotes.

    Not understanding the significance of human life from conception to death and honoring the dead after they have died – is to not understand the first thing about morality. Though, it makes sense for Human Secularists who, despite the word ‘human’ in their worldview moniker, are desperate to make humans less than the final and crowning creation of a Creator.

    A being on day one – all two cells – is not an abstraction. It’s not a bugger. It will become a human being.

    When does one gain one’s humanity?

    When you get your Master’s degree or move out of the house? Age 2? First breath? First brain wave in the womb? First heartbeat in the womb? 16 cells in the womb?

    I never mentioned morality. Of course I could.

    It’s wrong to use embryonic human stem cells or even consider them until everything possible has been done with adult human stem cells. Let’s do that , then we’ll chat about the humanity of destroying human zygotes (how conveniently dehumanizing it is to say ‘fetus’ and ‘zygote’ instead of unborn baby). How many women have a fetus shower?

  20. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    re: immoral research

    I had forgotten the syphillis episode and certain would acknowledge that what the Nazi’s did in WWII with humans was the very depths of immorallity.

    And – I have to acknowledge that when it comes right down to one’s belief about what a fetus and/or zygote is – that morality is truly in the eye’s of the beholder.

    And – I will admit that I think the distinction being made at the zygotes level really, really puzzles me – so I guess that means my values are different from those who DO see a distinction.

    So, I don’t agree with the concept that destroying zygotes is essentially the moral equivalent of the Nazi’s experimenting with humans but apparently there are folks who do believe this in their hearts.

    I DO think folks are entitled to their beliefs but I do not believe that they are entitled to force their beliefs on others who do not believe. In the end – those that don’t believe and remain unconvinced – no matter who they are or where they live in this world – will move ahead on research unless society as a whole condemns it.

    I’m convinced that it may take years, perhaps decades but at some point – we’ll look back on all of this like we do now with regard to witch burnings or snake rituals. That’s obviously a personal opinion.

  21. James Atticus Bowden Avatar
    James Atticus Bowden

    Larry Gross: We can respectfully have a difference of opinion. But, puh-leeze, drop the ‘forcing their opinions on others’ rhetoric.

    The Liberal Human Secularists are forcing their beliefs when they insist on having human embryonic stem cells created and destroyed – when adult embryonic stem cells will do nicely, thank you.

    Politics is who gets what.

    Everyone is forcing ideas, beliefs, even if they are so unaware to not know what their beliefs are or deny having them, etc. The marketplace of ideas has deals closed at the ballot box. If your ideas, beliefs, didn’t get enough votes then you didn’t bid enough and you lose.

    Opinions have been forced on others in English-speaking Virginia since 1619. (Actually before, but not by a representative body)

  22. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    I cannot disagree with your views on how politics works because as stated – there are winners and losers even in representative forms of government and the losers are often affected by legal sanctions approved by majorities.

    But in this case, are we sure that significant majorities SUPPORT the ban? From what I can tell from POLLS, they do not. Am I wrong?

    If this is true, then how do we explain the votes of those who claim to represent their constitutents but don’t?

  23. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    The stem cell debate is a debate on how we value human life. What is interesting is that more than a few Frankenstein mixes of genetic material are underway, primarily with our food supplies and no one cares because it’s not a polarizing issue.

    In addition, the large food production corporations have successfully lobbied in recent months for Congress to significantly moderate the food labeling act, which dates from 1906, when individuals would buy the latest elixir from mail order and find that they had ingested poison–Congress wisely asked for rules and regulations of food production.

    This dichotomy of effort is where I have trouble with Republicans. And I’ve counted myself as one for many years. It’s okay to fight technology that destroys human life quickly but not okay to fight technology that may have profoundly dangerous and far-reaching impact on what we are. Bluntly, no one other than a few organic food producers are paying attention.

    This issue illustrates the core conflict with Republicanism: limited government oversight wars with the desire to regulate social behaviour.

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