re: #554 karmic_inquisitor

Well it puzzled me that there was a Norwegian doctor in Gaza who could only blame Jews for deaths and injuries and not Hamas. Then I saw his fake CPR tape.

Science has become highly political precisely because of the distortions created with Federal funding. Just as with higher education.

I really do not think it is fair at all to compare stem cell researchers with that Norwegian propagandist. The reality is that science is not cheap. Modern research projects can not just be left to private funding - particularly in a slow economy. The reason for this is pure research does not always produce what the board room wants and more to the point, the data needs to be freely availible to the rest of the community for peer review and general advancement - so that people can build on the work.
It can not be propriatary for science to work.

This means that the government needs to be the primary funder of science. There was a time in American post-war science where the government mostly had the sense not to argue with the scientific community itself over what the science actually was. I will just be fair and honest and say the the religious right and those politicians who feel the need to feed them are not particularly open minded about pure science.

This is not to say that there have not been any number of congressional and presidential idiot moves with regard to science. However, the best bet of getting pure research done is as a nation and not a boardroom. It is hard enough explaining to congessmen why we should care about fundamental science. It is much harder explaining to the bottom line that we are in this for the knowledge and that knowledge will always eventually pay off, however it might not help you make your company’s product.

As to the stem cells themselves, I am a physicist not a biologist or an MD. However, people whom I trust are in those fields and they tell me that the potential is enormous. The resarch will not encourage a “boom” in abortions. That many stem lines are simply not needed. Also given that abortion is still legal, and boy am I opening a can of worms here, but given that it is, I would rather see stem cells used to save lives then simply treated as medical waste.