John Kerry - Hero........................................not

An impervious wall of liberalism has infected too many minds.

Refusing to see facts when they are in front of your face = shill.

You people are playing word games to make it seem as if Bush supports this branch of science which he clearly doesn't. If not for the pressure he was put under by a large amount of Americans, Bush never would support ANY embryonic stem cell research.

Cycloptichorn

Which is his right, however, as president, he has allowed the research to comtinue. He has allowed funding for existing embryonic lines and full funding for research using stem cells harvested from non-embryonic sources.

You say I am refusing to see the facts, but you need to look in the mirrior on this one Cyclotichorn.

Refusing to see facts when they are in front of your face = shill.
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I agree, but I wasn't going to be so blunt. Still, you should accept that there is not a ban and stop saying there is. I know you don't want to be a duped shill for the Democrat party.

Bush supports stem cell research.<------ a fact

I think we've reached the point where we are shooting past each other.

Bush did have the right to ban it outright; but support for stem cell research is huge, nationwide, the opinions really do favor allowing the research to be done.

This being said, his advisors told him 'look, you gotta throw them a bone, this would be political suicide - it would be like not allowing cancer research, etc.' So he allowed a paltry number of cell lines to be used (most of which are not of the proper quality for rigorous testing).

You can argue whether that constitutes a ban or not, I accept that, but please don't hold it up as if this man is a supporter of stem cell research. He has done only what was neccessary at the time politically - a position he often accuses his opponent of.


Cycloptichorn

Guess which word has to be changed in order to make this into a "true" statement.

Does this mean that public research is the only valid research? In other words, any research done by the private sector is null and void?



Each of us are guaranteed death at some point. Given this, should we go ahead and give up our vital organs for those who are dying of say, liver disease, to save them?

Should there perhaps be a better look at how these embryos are grown and treated in the first place?

Private sector research, if done, is de-lovely. Though private sector research is probably more often funded by those with an agenda, and in those cases less likely to be good science -- if a benefactor gives you a billion dollars to prove that there is no such thing as a gay gene, you're gonna do your best to prove that there is no such thing as a gay gene.

However, the larger issue is just that it's way way WAY harder to get anything done with private money. Government funding is where it's at.

If agree that if you have a fundamental problem with embryos being destroyed, the whole fertility industry needs to be re-examined. (Is Bush doing that?)

Centrus,

Welcome to A2K.

There is a large difference between public research and private research. The difference lies in the goals of the research. Public research, university-based research, focuses on understanding WHY things happen, advancing new theories, and other general research which leads to advances in our scientific knowledge as a whole.

PRIVATE research, on the other hand, is usually product-driven. This is easy to understand; an investment company that dumps a whole ton of money into research isn't just looking for advances in the realm of science, but specific products. They need to see some sort of return on their investment. This is great for application, finding new ways to use current theories, but not good for advancing the field of science.

University-level research is under no pressure to come up with marketable products, and therefore, can spend a lot more money and time researching theories and advancing the understanding of underlying factors in the field.

For America to be successful scientifically, it is critical that we fully use both avenues of research - public and private. Bush's ban on public stem cell research (outside of a few cell lines which are in many cases highly inadequate for rigorous research) effectively cuts the American study of embryonic stem cells in half.

We are falling behind Europe and Asia in this subject. This isn't a supposition on my part; it's a fact. We need to catch up before we become seriously behind, because that's when you start losing your scientists to other countries; that would be catastrophic for the US.

Cheers and once again welcome!

Cycloptichorn

To make money?

Are the majority of fertility clinics privately run or government funded?



Do only public universities do research? Also, is all money used in research at any university only from the government, or is some of it privately funded through donations or tuition?

Thanks for the welcome, but don't expect me to leave the "newly hatched" department for some time. I prefer to lurk and only respond when my interest is piqued.

Fetility clinics don't conduct stem cell research...

HEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHE---sozobe stop using logic..it throws them off their game :-)

But that is where the embryos come from, is it not?

Makes one wonder why sozobe would even create that strawman, doesn't it?

No, McGentrix, Centrus started that one.



We're talking about stem cell research. Centrus quoted me talking about private sector research. Then he asks about whether fertility clinics are privately run or government funded. Fertility clinics have nothing to do with research except for sometimes providing some of the raw materials -- they do not conduct the research.

Where's the strawman?

Centrus,

did you read my post? There is a huge difference between product-oriented and knowledge-oriented research.

Private companies have little incentive to give money for knowledge-oriented research, as it very rarely turns into money for them (which is the purpose of the company, after all). It does happen in some cases - Berkely recieves a good amount of private money, and IBM donates quite a bit to CS research - but for the most part real scientifc advances, advances in our knowledge and understanding of WHY things work, is done at the university level and paid for by public money.

Bush has effectively choked that off for stem cell research. Not a good thing.

Cycloptichorn

That's a leap McG.

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/straw-man.html

Description of Straw Man
The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person's actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position. This sort of "reasoning" has the following pattern:


Person A has position X.
Person B presents position Y (which is a distorted version of X).
Person B attacks position Y.
Therefore X is false/incorrect/flawed.
This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because attacking a distorted version of a position simply does not constitute an attack on the position itself. One might as well expect an attack on a poor drawing of a person to hurt the person.

Sorry sozobe, my question wasn't meant to be construed as part of the research question; rather it was tangential. I should have specified that I was referring to:



Cyc, I read your reply.

How much does the federal government normally contribute to these research grants? Is public money also contributed from the state govt's?

OK. That part didn't have anything to do with funding, though, was just acknowledging that the logical extension of "we won't let more embryos be destroyed for stem cell research" (paraphrase) is to examine the fertility industry, which regularly destroys embryos. Either acknowledge that the embryos will be destroyed anyway -- and put them to good, possibly lifesaving use -- or do something about their destruction. And as far as I know Bush isn't doing that. But my question was sincere, I don't know whether he is or not.

It would seem to be the more morally consistent position.