First ESC Clinical Trials to BeginFollow

*Shrug*

They should have written the amendment with better language. If someone wants to revise the language and try to pass through a new version, tell 'em to have at it. As is, it doesn't explicitly prohibit research done on stem cells which were not derived via federal funding.

Knowing more about what it necessarily involves not only knowing that the human embryo is destroyed, but that it also WAS NEVER EVER in a human womb to begin with. The egg it was created from came from a woman's body. But the embryo was created outside of her body, and never had a chance to ever grow into a fetus. It was created then frozen, and without being frozen it would have died in a petri dish. It most likely was frozen at the 8-30 cell mark, while some of it's fellow embryos in the batch were implanted, and others frozen as well.

Are you talking about this:

???

Because all that the above poll demonstrates to me is that half of people are either confused in their morals (morally inconsistent) when not given time enough to think about a new thing or new information, OR that they are conflating two different things in their head. Since, as you can see, half of the people who morally approved of ESC reasearch happening, and being legal, didn't approve at that time of the federal government funding it.

By the first, I mean that half of them have decided that it's all right to use embryos discarded as waste from fertility treatments when they were discarded before a certain arbitrary point in time, but that it's NOT alright to use embryos saved from the trash can in exactly the same way in exactly the same circumstances, except that it's after than arbitrary point in time. Or they haven't understood by the two different questions that what I've described is what is going on here. Nothing is different between the two process except one was carried out before that date, and one was carried out after that date.

By the second, I mean that people in the poll were conflating practical budgeting outcomes with the moral question of whether something ought to be considered/allowed in the Federal Science budget at all. That is, half the people who said ESC research ought to happen then turned around and said the federal government ought not to fund it. I presume that those people who "switched sides" are generally in favour of less taxes and less government spending. They were worried about their own personal tax bill, rather than thinking about whether, within the existing science budget and given that no more taxes are raised, some of the money ought to go to ESC research. Those people were replying to the second question not on the moralities of ESC research at all, but on the moralities of Government vs Private expenditure on any issue.

Zeepoodle, that's awfully fancy of you. I've always been happy with !?

Edited, Feb 5th 2009 1:47am by Aripyanfar

Cause you people aren't entertaining me enough... ;)



There's no confusion, and I suspect the conflation is on your part, not theirs.

What this means is that a significant number of people understand the difference between wanting something to happen, and funding it with taxpayer money. The results of the poll literally tell us that 75% of those polled favor ESC research as described, but 62% agree that it should not be funded with taxpayer money. This is only a confusing result if for some reason you can't separate those two in your own mind.


If I were to compose a poll asking people if they favor the filming of Iron Man2, and then followed it up with a question asking if they thought the government should fund the project with taxpayer money, would you be surprised if the numbers didn't match? So why be surprised by these numbers?




Does that make their position any less valid? Again, this only matters if for some reason you assume that we should *only* consider this on a moral/ethical standpoint. That's a nice strawman that has been employed by many on the "pro-funding" side of this, but it's not true. What this poll tells you (and you *almost* figured out), is that the picture painted for us of the opposition being all made up of religious fanatics raving about the sanctity of life and protection of the unborn is not wholly accurate.

It's clear that while there are many people who oppose research on embryos period (for the above mentioned reason), the primary opposition among the population as a whole isn't to allowing the research, but funding it. And their reasons for that are far more complex than a simple "OMG! They're chopping up babies and that's wrong!", and it does the issue a disservice to blanketly characterize their position this way.


It also shows that Bush's compromise of allowing research on existing lines, while barring funding for line from newly harvested embryos, far from being "out of touch" with how the people view the issue, is in fact pretty much spot on. When you ask the whole question with all the information, people support pretty much exactly what he chose to do. Obama would be reversing something that (according to that poll) 62% of the population agrees with. That's hardly a position born from popular support...

Edited, Feb 6th 2009 5:17pm by gbaji

Nice mischaracterization there Joph.

My statements were aimed at how Congress might get around the restrictions of the Dickey Amendment, which might technically make Obama's executive order illegal and meaningless. The potential negative fallout to Obama for choosing this course of action is one thing, but the "they'll wait 10 months" bit didn't have anything to do with that.


I'm honestly starting to believe that the Obama administration and the Dems in general have taken a "get what we can while we can" approach and aren't even trying to be politically smart by appearing to be somewhat bipartisan. I had originally assumed they'd at least try to to maintain that illusion, but given the string of such promises just blatantly ignored, it doesn't look like they're even bothering to pretend anymore.

Edited, Mar 9th 2009 5:15pm by gbaji

We already talked about this Joph.

They were passed by a Congress that knew that the sitting president would veto the bill. Right now, there is still no Congressional Act specifically funding ESC research with newly harvested stem cell lines, which (as we discussed earlier) puts Obama's executive order in a bit of legal limbo. It's quite possible to challenge that order as violating the aforementioned law. Until Congress does pass a new law removing or modifying the restrictions against funding the harvesting of human embryos for research, this will continue to be the case.

But hey. Don't take my word for it. The NY Times said basically the same thing.


At best, his executive order opens up a few more lines for research and massively increases the amount of gray area being skirted here, and the amount of "noise" in opposition to the idea. Doing so 5 years ago might have made sense. Doing it today is kinda silly IMO. I suppose if your objective is to pay back Liberal supporters, there's some logic to it, but honestly he's just pissing people off for pretty much zero gain here. Stem Cell research has progressed pretty darn will under the compromise rules Bush established back in 2001. Aside from pure ideological stupidity, Obama had no reason at all to step into this issue.

In the context of doing exactly that, yes it is.

As I stated earlier in this thread, an executive order by Obama does nothing to change the underlying issue at hand. It just grandfathers some more lines in. And it may not even do that, depending on how the amendment is interpreted in the courts. As I stated before, a child can see the flaw in trying to argue that the existence of federal funds for research somehow wont cause harvesting of embryos. It's possible, but unlikely that federal judges will fail to see it as well.

Obama's is more "in limbo" because Bush just grandfathered in lines that existed prior to *any* federal funding of stem cells (embryonic or not). Thus, those lines could safely be defined as lines that existed without federal funding as the cause. That *cannot* be said of any lines created since that point in time, and certainly cannot be said of any lines created from this point forward.


That has always been my fundamental problem with just issuing an executive order and being done with it. It's more or less an empty gesture. It'll rile people up, but doesn't resolve the issue. The only thing that does, is to legislatively change the amendment. Hence, why I said waaaaaaaay back when that Congressional action is required. And while you seem to think that will be easy, I think it'll end out being a lot more difficult than you might think.


I think you are seriously discounting the amount of playing politics that goes on. While I'd love to think that every politician simply votes for things he agrees with and against things they disagree with, the sad fact is that a good percentage play the public perception game. When Dems are labeling anyone opposed to ESC as religious nutjobs opposed to science and desiring for sick people to die, it's a lot easier for a Republican who does oppose ESC to just vote yes on a bill when he knows it'll be vetoed. If he knows it wont, he'll be a lot less likely to vote for it.

The amendment does not just restrict federal funding to pay for the extraction (I used the term harvesting) of embryos Joph. Stop trying to mischaracterize the issue.

The amendment says that federal funds shall not be granted to "research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death...". It's pretty clear that you can't do research on ESC without first doing exactly that which the amendment denies funding for. It's more than a bit weasily to try to argue that as long as you don't actually use the federal grant money to do the harvesting that the research using the harvested embryos is perfectly ok...



It shouldn't be. But your "side" is trying really hard to make it complicated.


Is it that complicated to understand that if you fund ESC research that this will result in more embryos being harvested *for* said research? And it's not complicated to see that this was exactly what the amendment was written to prevent.



Irrelevant. I'm not arguing that federal funds paid for the harvesting, but that the harvesting happened as a result of the existence of federal funds for the research on those harvested embryos. Again. This isn't complex. A small child can see that you're dodging the issue here, and I'm quite sure that most judges will see it too.


Hence, why I keep saying that Obama's executive order, by itself, does very little, and actually opens up a whole can of legal worms. If you recall, my original statement was about why he chose not to just issue the order on day one of his administration. I suggested that it's because he knows he really needs action by Congress to make it stick. All his order does is get the opposition riled up and give them legal targets to fire at.




Nice. I love how the wink is supposed to protect you from any connection to the characterization of those who oppose funding ESC. I'm sorry. But isn't it enough that it's legal? Why is it like some crime not to fund it? I just think that's backwards thinking all the way around...


And yes, Joph. You are grossly underestimating the degree to which politics plays into this. Remember, when your original question was about why Obama took so long to even start to consider doing this. This started a thread about him wanting to get Congress on board first. I suggested that the reason he wanted to do that was exactly so that he wasn't the lone voice trying to push something that, despite your arguments, isn't nearly as popular as you blindly believe.

Obama has gone out on that limb. Good for him. That either means that he's gotten Congress to commit to putting it on the agenda, or he's willing to just take the heat for them (which may be the case, since it appears lately he's just been playing puppet to Nancy and Harry). Hard to say.


Either way, if/when a bill comes up, I still believe you are grossly underestimating how much more difficult it'll be to get it to pass.


]

I haven't been wrong about anything Joph. Maybe you think I'm saying something I'm not. You do tend to argue against stuff I didn't say, so maybe you honestly think I've been arguing that Obama doesn't want to do this, or even that he wouldn't do this. I only suggested a reason why he might delay putting the executive order out. My reasoning is the same reasoning talked about in the Times article. It's not as clear cut without congressional action. He therefore (obviously) wanted to wait until he thought he could get it.


How that equates to being "dead wrong" is a bit unclear to me. The only prediction I made was the manner in which Congress would attempt to make the legal changes to support this. Everything else I stated was speculation about why Obama didn't issue this executive order on day one, and support for that reason.

I stand by those arguments. They are as valid today as they were when I first made them. There are legal problems with funding any research on ESC in which the cells can in any way be shown to have been harvested in anticipation of said funding. It's an obvious legal argument.

Only by deliberately mis-interpreting the amendment in question will you fail to see this. Not surprisingly, you have twice in a row misstated the meaning of the amendment. I'll say again. It does not only restrict federal funding for the harvesting. It prevents any research that results in destruction of a human embryo. If the research can be shown to be the cause of the destruction, that disqualifies it from funding.


It does not specify that the destruction itself had to be paid for. Just caused by the research. Again (and I'm not sure why I seem to have to repeat this over and over), a child can see that funding research on new lines will cause more human embryos to be destroyed. It's not a matter of if. It *will* happen.

That's painfully clear.




False.


ESC cells are taken from blastocysts, a cell which is typically 4-6 days old and contains no more than 100 cells. Any cell beyond this age is useless to ESC. So no, aborted fetuses (I'm guessing most and by most I mean 99% of women find out their pregnant well beyond the 4-6 day period) are not useful to ESC.


These blastocysts, are born if you will, in a petri dish and designed specifically for ESC, the odds of them living anywhere but that petri dish are absolutely zero.

Hey, not only was I right but the NIH decided I was right way back in '98.So the rules have been, for the last decade, as I stated they were and, as usual, Gbaji's full of conjecture and bullshit.

Edit: there was no "Richardey" amendment

Edited, Mar 10th 2009 12:06pm by Jophiel

False what? I was responding to Joph's statement, with a hypothetical maximum window in which IVF embryos would be harvested (or frozen for harvesting) for ESC research use.



And? Joph was the one complaining that the statement "The live embryos would be destroyed in their first week of development to obtain these cells" was a flat out lie. Not me. So you are saying that the wording in the poll question which Joph disagreed with was correct afterall? Great!


Why did you post in response to me? Why not quote Joph? My entire response was hypothetical. The poll could have stated a larger window (the entire time the cells are called "embryos", 6 weeks) in order to make their point stronger and falsely influence the results of their poll. They didn't. Joph seemed upset at this for some reason. Which was somewhat mystifying. And now you seem upset about it too, which is doubly mystifying.

The original poll question Joph was attacking correctly identified the time frame involved. Are we done with this now?




Er. Not according to the arguments used by the ESC harvesting folks. They're still going on the "We're only using embryos left over from IVF. We would *never* create embryos purely to harvest them for their stem cells...." argument.

They are not created just for ESC. They are created for IVF. Then, if there are some left over, they could be used for ESC. Some people think that this is still unethical and oppose the federal government funding it. I happen to think they have a point.


Thanks for showing us the next step in the slippery slope though. Gotta love that...

Edited, Mar 10th 2009 6:16pm by gbaji