Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
The Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act
Courtesy of the Easter Bunny
Nothing illustrates the hypocrisy of compassionate conservatism like President Bush's policy on embryonic stem cells. Soon after the Easter break, the Senate will debate and vote on the 2007 version of the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act. This latest attempt to resurrect Republican social responsibility has percolated since January. At that time, the House passed identical legislation as part of Nancy Pelosi's First Hundred Hours of the new Democratic Congress.
Since then, six years of lies, mismanagement, and shenanigans helped sidetrack momentum on our country's domestic agenda. The president faces burgeoning scandals at home. His trustworthiness sinks in the oily sands of Iraq. Public skepticism puts a precarious tilt to each iota of his executive behavior. Stem cells wait in the queue as the next embarrassment for the Bush administration.
Congress passed a nearly duplicate bill last July. The president canned it with his first veto. He is determined that federal funds not be allowed for research involving the destruction of human embryos. Apparently, he sees no contradiction with billions of American tax dollars spent which result in the deaths of thousands of U.S. soldiers and innocent victims in Iraq.
The president's 2001 policy on embryonic stem cell research tortures logic. It failed to deliver compassion, common sense, or his "culture of life." He poses as the moral guardian of the excess embryos from in-vitro fertilization clinics. He boasts of preserving the sanctity of life they represent. Yet, in five plus years, this machismo has not saved a single one.
Obviously, it was never about the lives of the embryos. Bush alienated Americans who believe in the hope of embryonic stem cell research in order to garner support from social conservatives. Loyalty at the ballot box reduced the integrity of the scientific debate to DC's lowest common denominator: votes.
The stem cell issue reveals, again, the troubling consequences of obstructing justice for political gain. The justice in question is that sought by millions of citizens with chronic medical conditions. The protracted indifference caused by the Bush policy infuriates families begging for leadership on health-care.
They have reason to be cranky too, for apologists credit the president with creating a compromise on ESCR, even though his policy halted critical federal investment — and, by extension, private investment — into the field of regenerative medicine. Distorted facts and spun messages create an alternate reality on embryonic stem cells. Unheard amidst this din of white (house) noise are the impartial opinions of scientists not associated with the political machine.
Champions of stem cell research promise to pummel the president by re-introducing the legislation over and over. Bush, ever stubborn, vows to quash any alteration to his original bitter brew.
Next week's debate on the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act will highlight this impasse. Senators Coleman, R-MN, and Isakson, R-GA, concocted a decoy bill full of sugar and cream to disguise the awful taste of bad policy. This artless flimflam aims to re-mystify the science with propaganda. Such transparent political cover should add entertainment to the beltway drama.
Those living with severe illness or injury, though, are not amused. These partisan theatrics divert attention from the reality of the lives affected. Fortunately, patient groups enjoy a louder voice with a Democratic majority less tolerant to the dictatorial reign of President Bush. What once was effective at the polls is now dangerous for the GOP. Out of loyalty for the man who would be king, they align themselves with the corruption of Iraq and ignore suffering at home extending across the entire spectrum of the electorate.
Meanwhile, the president waves his magic wand of rhetoric at a bloated health-care system upon which these patient groups must depend. But, like the sorcerer's apprentice, his stem cell policy only makes the problem grow. His endorsement of flat lining the budget of the National Institutes of Health and diverting a third of its resources to bio-terrorism research cripples what was once the world's best paradigm for integration between science, industry, and patient therapies.
Curative research and solutions in the aggregate costs less than indefinite care. This concept escapes the attention of a president distracted with the pursuit of power. He seeks to balance the books for bean counters without solving the underlying fiscal or physical dilemmas. The implication is that belt tightening is the answer. It is not.
The answer lies in a commitment to curing illnesses and relieving secondary complications. Yet the Bush doctrine discourages ingenuity for remedies that could benefit everyone. Humanitarian principles, alone, should trump such absurdities. But the expectation of competent management of America's resources is also relevant…and missing.
The lack of a sensible and merciful science policy has blocked the process of inquiry into human biology. Mankind loses when politics interrupt our natural proclivity for compassion and survival. The science of regenerative medicine — including the use of embryonic stem cells — may be seen as a moral obligation in the fight against considerable suffering.
What our country needs is a double-shot of the scientific method. Anything less and the dollar cost to our nation will be colossal, exceeded only by the cost to our collective conscience.
John Smith is a writer, patient advocate, and postmaster from a small town in Oregon. He serves as a moderator in the Cure and Funding, Legislation, and Advocacy Forums for Care Cure Community. Care Cure is the largest spinal cord injury website in the world and is hosted by Rutgers University. His website; The Other Side of Broken.
6 Comments so far
Show AllSomewhat related to stem cell studies is research being sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
The DARPA-sponsored studies hope to explore the mechanisms by which many creatures can regrow limbs, tails, etc., and to see if this can be applied to humans.
For more on the DARPA research grants, see:
"U.S. defense research agency sponsors 'mind-blowing' studies to regrow human limbs"
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=14652
Another great article on stem cell research:
http://www.whatthebleep.com/herald11/articles-2.shtml
"The public is generally ignorant of the fact that there are two forms of regenerative therapy by means of stem cells—Adult Stem Cell (ASC) therapy and Embryonic Stem Cell (ESC) therapy."
"ASC regenerative therapy is new, but already, it has proven extremely effective in a number of cases. In one case cited by Smith, ASC therapy resulted in the complete rebuilding of a badly damaged heart. When a report of the astonishing cure was published in a science journal, the FDA ordered the physician responsible for the cure not to perform the procedure on humans again—not until a great many tests on animals were completed."
"ESC regenerative therapy is also new. Today, the experimental results in animal tests range from problematic to negative. ESCs don't always do what we want them to do, and rejection by the immune system in a continuing problem."
"If and when ESC therapy is used on humans, some positive results may be expected. However, it is likely that all recipients will have to remain on very expensive drugs for the rest of their lives in order to suppress the autoimmune rejection response."
"It is ESC research/therapy that is touted by Big Biotech and Big Pharma as mankind's best hope for a healthful future! And most journalists go right along, tooting and touting ESC therapy."
"Consider stem cell therapy from the point of view of the investor: Let us say that you are an investor who wants to throw a significant amount of money into stem cell research/therapy, and you're very good about doing your "due diligence" (research). Are you going to invest your money in ASC research/therapy or in ESC research/therapy?"
Here is the key statement:
"it is likely that all recipients will have to remain on very expensive drugs for the rest of their lives in order to suppress the autoimmune rejection response". In other words we are much better off supporting research for Adult Stem Cell Research. The drug companies of course don't want this to happen. We need to get the word out about this.
Sorry for long post.
Martin Luther King said eloquently that a society that invests more in armaments than social uplift approaches spiritual death. To fund "a new generation" of nuclear weapons when our schools are falling apart, New Orleans still stuck in its quagmire, 40 million Americans without health insurance, our infrastructure left to rot, etc ad nauseum, these are NOT priorities of a sane administration, and certainly not one Compassionate or Christian. The irony, since so Bush & his neo-con policy mostly serves the ugly pursuit of mammon ("the love of money is the root of all evil" style) is that while the US pussy foots around on energy efficient technologies and/or stem cell research, the students in Hong Kong, China, Singapore, Europe and India are doing their homework. Our economy is falling behind, and no amount of militarism will change that. Like Rome, thanks to a would-be martial hero, we are falling on our own sword; still, the capacity to resurrect could smile on this land again, if it stopped forfeiting its soul for a policy of madness (seen on so many examples, the stem cell conundrum being just one.)
"The president's 2001 policy on embryonic stem cell research tortures logic."
The president's policy on just about everything tortures logic.
Never satisfied with robbing hope from thousands with incurable diseases, and then impeding California's voters efforts to pursue it, Bush then abused his veto power to block this promising cure.
His alleged concern for the unborn is rendered void by the unmeasurable deaths and illnesses resulting from his blockage of vital environmental, conservation and health reforms--either with secrecy, or disguising them as environmental friendly based irrational logic and manipulated science used to a degree never before experienced in our history.
With similar irrationality, he has compounded this destruction by undermining family planning and women's rights in impoverished areas--the only real means of ending world starvation and poverty for this and future generations, including the unborn.
In order to pacify his radical supporters, satisfy his own theocratic ego, and create diversions from real problems; he justifies his actions using the same misinformation and manipulated science to invalidate support from the medical profession and the public for this research. His shameless repeat theatrics with the "snowflake children" to forge his assertion--that using some of the thousands of otherwise discarded embryos is murder-- underscores his mentality and mendacity.
By allowing such outrages from this unlearned and dangerous president, guided by his financial and radical religious right supporters who planted him in office; Americans have only themselves to blame for not only the resulting medical setbacks, but also expanded world poverty, sickness, and degradation of our planet.
But the point is, perhaps all the controversy about embryonic stem cell research is completely unnecessary. If Adult Stem Cell therapy is just as, or more effective than Embryonic Stem Cell therapy, AND it doesn't require very expensive drugs for the rest of the patient's life in order to suppress the autoimmune rejection response, then isn't it a much better use of resources to support Adult Stem Cell therapy? Big Pharma is driving the controversy because it wants tax dollars spent on Embryonic Stem Cell therapy, not Adult Stem Cell therapy - even though it may not be the best form of treatment.