This issue is being handed to you, and the cons either have no position or a position that a vast majority disagree with. Every Democratic senate candidate should be running on the fact that Bill Frist is not allowing an up or down vote on stem cell research, and that the more Dems in the Senate, the better the chances of overriding a Bush veto of stem cell research. Lives are on the line here.
The drive to expand funding for embryonic stem cell research seemed to have impressive momentum a year ago. A bill sailed through the House and such popular Republicans as Nancy Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger and John McCain were publicly on board.
But now legislation is stalled in the Senate, with opponents and supporters engaged in behind-the-scenes maneuvering over the measure. Proponents of expanded research still hope to push through a bill this spring to increase spending on what they consider potentially life-saving technology, but opponents are equally impassioned and the outcome is uncertain.
The crossfire could leave Republicans in a tough spot. Some are beginning to worry they will be hurt in November’s midterm congressional elections if they don’t pass a stem cell bill. But many of the party’s conservatives forcefully oppose embryonic stem cell research as tantamount to abortion, and President Bush has promised to veto any bill expanding federal funding for it.
Up Or Down Vote on Stem Cell Research.
Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, run on “We’re in favor of stem cell research”
I can’t wait
Hey- at least it’s a message.
But like I’ve said before- it won’t be a clincher by any means. Especially if people figure out that stem cell research (all forms) is perfectly legal.
Great talking point Oliver! We’ll just have to wait and see how this pans out.
Because the substance of it is pretty weak, but it definitely is an issue that nobody listens closely enough to distinguish the facts.
In fact, I sometimes wonder if you really follow the issue very closely or just like spitting out the talking points on it.
Frank,
Do you really think the majority of Americans as a whole (as opposed to the Jesus-freak Republican base) are opposed to stem cell research? You really think that there are 100 million people in this country agonizing about the fate of blastocyst-Americans?
Frank, while I will admit abortion is divisive and has to be decided on a state by state basis as a campaign platform (its a lot easier to be pro-choice in Maryland than in Alabama), the anti-stem cell lobby is miniscule to the point of being ridiculous. Even among the furthest regions of the right, there is support for stem cell research. Because at the end of the day Americans support doing the hard scientific work that will save people’s lives. You want to run against saving people’s lives? Go for it.
Please explain how the substance of stem cell research is weak. We’re a long way off from the big payoff, but there are clear signs that from all the choices available, stem cell is an amazingly strong one. We weren’t sure we could go to the moon, but we did it. We’re not exactly sure what stem cells will provide us in the long run, but it would be a hell of a shame if it were the magic bullet and we let some close-minded knuckle draggers take it away for their own selfish reasons.
Why is it that the distinction between embryonic stem cell research and adult stem cell research is never differentiated ?
As I stated in a prior thread, this issue just does not grab me.
However, it does seem disingenuous to paint some as wanting to ban stem cell research. A more accurate way of describing it is that they do not believe that the federal government should be subsidizing the research.
To the best of my knowledge, there is no ban or even restrictions on private sector research. I may be naive, but if the potential upside of this research was shown to have great potential, it seems like the market would readily fill any gaps in funding.
You may not want stem cell research today Frank. But when your child or your spouse are diagnosed with Huntingtons chorea, or Alzheimers, or cancer, you’ll be praying to God for the very hope that this research could provide.
Yes! Run on stem cell research. Please, please please, please, please. Because a lot more people than you think are sick of some of the bible thumping nonsense being crammed down their throats. Even a lot of republicans have had it.
“… it seems like the market would readily fill any gaps in funding.”
Another example of just how much conservatives really understand about the free market and the government’s role in it. In all kinds of the technologies and research fields it’s our money as tax payers that gets the ball rolling before anyone in the private sector can see a way to make a profit on something. Government funding is absolutely essential to get research going when the risks are high and the pay offs are largely unknown. Low and behold if and when the initial research pays off and companies see the upside to investing they’ll dive in, make the next wave of advances and charge us all an arm and a leg for access to it — all while decrying government funded health care as detrimental to their motivation to pursue new research.
So you’re saying that we don’t know if embryonic stem cell research will help those whose “lives are on the line”?
“the risks are high and the pay offs are largely unknown”. Accepting what you said as being true, it seems to me that you make the case for many of those that contend that the potential benefits are far far far less certain and immediate than others may suggest. Methinks former Senator Edwards was exaggerating, or lying, when he said that if they were elected, Christopher Reeve would get up and walk again, due to stem cell research.
Having said that, frame never disappoints in declaring himself the arbiter of truth, justice, and the American way.
actually, nursepam, I won’t.
Contrary to liberal talking points, I am not interested in “denying the benefits” of stem cell research to all the teeming masses of suffering victims. I am not quite the coldblooded Snidely Whiplash, you would make me out to be.
I’m just not ready to traffic in human embyos to help keep the aged rich alive.
It seems kind of ghoulish to me. There are people out there who don’t want to put mascara on dogs for Maybelline. But you want to tempt people to have extra emryos for stem cell research. What next? Specially marked Drivers’ Licences? If I’m found dead at a car accident, yank the embryo / fetus out of my womb, to help cure Bill Gates’ Huntington Chorea
Because, one thing I know is that, before a Medicaid recipient gets the “benefit” of this research, it’ll be the year 2025, or maybe 2125.
JD
“However, it does seem disingenuous to paint some as wanting to ban stem cell research. A more accurate way of describing it is that they do not believe that the federal government should be subsidizing the research.’
Abso-frappin-lutley!
Dugger
Isn’t it amazing how, when the issue is something that Repugnicants don’t want to deal with, all of a suuden that whole ‘up or down vote’ thing gets thrown out the window? Funny how that works…
Um, excuse me, you can write the insane nonsense above and talk about “liberal talking points”?!?
Radical religious-right conservatives have tried to create exactly the false narrative you describe above with their scaremonger tactics and talking points like these. No one is now, or has ever, talked about yanking fetuses to get embronyic stem cells. Besides painting dedicated medical and genetic researchers as would-be junior Mengeles, it bears absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to what an embryonic stem cell actually is. May I suggest you try some reading on the subject?
To summarize, you can’t get embryonic stem cells from a developed fetus because, by the time it would be recognizable as a fetus, the stem cells has already transformed into the defined cell type (skin cell, muscle cell, nerve cell, etc.) from the “generic” stem cell template, making it useless for the very type of research that scientists want to perform!
This is just another battle in the ongoing Republican War on Science, from Bush’s “courageous” opposition to “human-animal hybrids” (whatever the friggin’ hell those are), to muzzling of NASA climatogists and cosmology information, to the insistence on poisoning our schoolkids’ minds with the fantasies of Creationism/ID. But, hey, if Bush and the Dobsons/Robertsons/Falwells of the world want to turn us into a 2nd rate power trailing the rest of the reality-based industrialized world, I guess they have the right to try.
“Having said that, frame never disappoints in declaring himself the arbiter of truth, justice, and the American way.”
Oh please. Embryonic stem cell research offers the hope of significant medical breakthroughs but science and private companies need a little more than hope before they invest significant capital. Someone please tell me how many private companies were willing to invest millions, if not billions, of dollars into researching packet switching networks in 1969. Federal funding gets the ball rolling when there’s no one else around to push.
That should be: “… but science needs funding and private companies need a little more than hope before they invest significant capital.”
Blastocyst-American!
ROTFL!
I just did a spit-take all over my monitor!
Rheinhard: Thanks for reminding of two things I had forhotten, and informing me about something I didn’t know:
1) Adult stem cells are collected from a limited number of cell types in the body. Typically these are bone marrow cells or from very early stages of tissue development.
2) Umbilical cord stem cells are collected from the cells of the umbical cord of a recently born baby. Some of these cells are slightly undeveloped and so can turn into other types of cells (multipotent)
and 3) [What I did not know] But there is continuing research into if it is possible to make multipotent cells into pluripotent types.
So we know that embryonic stem cells are not indispensible.
Thank you.
>>I m just not ready to traffic in human embyos to help keep the aged rich alive
Ya, damn that Michael J. Fox. Those people with Parkinson’s should suck it up until Frank comes up with a better solution.
And those “old people” with weak hearts. (Oh, that’s right…sometimes young people have weak hearts too.)
Damn all of those kids with cancer.
This from the NIH:
“Pluripotent stem cells offer the possibility of a renewable source of replacement cells and tissues to treat a myriad of diseases, conditions, and disabilities including Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, spinal cord injury, stroke, burns, heart disease, diabetes, osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis.”
http://stemcells.nih.gov/info/health.asp
Donald Trump couldn’t pay a person any amount of money to be as dumb as you are, Frank.
It’s not name-calling. It just is. If you don’t understand the science behind it, then why are you opening your ignorant hole?
JK
Dugger and JD…I think I pointed this out a few weeks ago. You obviously weren’t impressed. (However, I am enjoying Dugger’s “knee-pad” response” to JD.)
We have a public-private research enterprise in this country that works very well. In fact, it’s the best in the world, bar none.
One of the reasons why federally funded biomedical research is important, it precisely because a lot of companies rely on the basic science going on at Universities and Hospitals. Much of this science is FEDERALLY funded. This basic science often lays the foundation for later discovery and new drugs, therapies, cures, etc.
I realize that both of you are knee-jerk free-market nymphomaniacs, but when you’re discussing the issue of cures, treatments for diseases that don’t affect a particularly large percentage of the population, for example, perhaps the free-market isn’t the best way to go? Or, perhaps we should let you have your compassionate way, and just let them continue to be sick or die.
Seriously. You clowns need to think before you write. We all realize that you believe “all government bad,” but there are actually examples out there, of government success stories.
Stop being so damn intellectually lazy, get off your ass, away from the keyboard, and ask some questions of people (Dr’s, for example) who know a little bit about curing the sick.
JK
JK, why don’t you go f*ck yourself… I’ve had just about all the crap out of you I can stand. Why don’t you get a job tossing dwarves, so you can feel superior to somebody?
Oh, yeah… You’re still an arrogant Nazi prick!
I’m sorry, I don’t get the whole moral outrage thing against stem cells. If scientists are using fertilized eggs to harvest stem cells from embryos that will never be implanted or have a chance to become a fetus, let alone a baby, what is the big deal? I don’t see this as a right to life issue, except perhaps the right to life of the afflicted that this research is intended to benefit. At the stage they are talking about, it is not a human being, it is a clump of cells. Cells with magical properties, to be sure, but still just a clump of cells. Does the Right-to Life crowd assert that it would be better to destroy these embryos rather than have them used for the betterment of Mankind?
Sometimes when I make scrambled eggs, I get a fertilized one. Does that make me a chicken murderer? Even though that egg would never develop into a viable chicken?
Give me a break.
I still like the term blastocyst-American.
Oliver- I think you just made my point AND you’ve shown why the simpleton argument of “they are against stem cell research” could be mildly effective. Great dumbed-down talking point, but for those who study the issue (very little do) it is weak.
The greatest advances and most stable advances have been in adult and cord blood stem cell research. Embryonic stem cells have been extremely unstable at best. Granted- there needs to be a lot of research done, but again- there are no types of stem cell research that have been banned and it continues to go on.
But like I said- it makes a great talking point because I don’t think people pay very close attention to the issue. (Or any issue for that matter.)
Yes JK. It would be desirable if the Federal government, the state government, Mayor Nagins or my Aunt Irma would fund everything. I guess its only stupid conservatives standing in the way of geniuses like yourself who have figured out that: gee, it would be good to fund stuff. H*ll, fund everything. Why didn’t we think of that!!! But I bet you had to go college to come up with such profound thoughts.
And the point stands firm: lack of fedreal funding is not a prohibiton. If all the Democrats can think of is to come out in favor of funding everything, probably even Alan Keyes could beat ‘em.
Dugger
From Franks’s earlier posts he said he didn’t see the point in all this research if it only benefitted the rich, such as Bill Gates. Suddenly the rich don’t matter? Would you say that you’re for their huge tax cuts but not for keeping them alive?
Frank and JD, I hope you two don’t pass each other on the streets. Especially during spittin’ season.
>>JK, why don t you go f*ck yourself& I ve had just about all the crap out of you I can stand.
I’m just getting started, you insensitive jerk. It’s coming, and it’s coming hard. I told you that, after you appealed to my better sense in email, and then betrayed me and my liberal colleagues here by calling us every name in the book.
You are going down, Frank.
Austrailia bekons, dumb ass.
JK
>>Suddenly the rich don t matter? Would you say that you re for their huge tax cuts but not for keeping them alive?
Well, you see Rounds, conservatives are also in favor of the estate tax. So, if an old, rich person gets a tax cut, and then dies at the hands of a disease that had the potential to be cured by stem-cell research, the “estate” would be passed on to his/her heirs. Tax free of course.
I have a feeling that Frank has some very old, very sick, and very rich relatives.
If you’re a conservative, it’s all about the bottom-line.
JK
I wonder how many conservative women are going to donate their wombs so the zygotes can live.
>>It would be desirable if the Federal government, the state government, Mayor Nagins or my Aunt Irma would fund everything
I’m a bit confused. How did we go Bush funding federally supported research to the tune of $126B for FY07, to funding everything, including my impacted molars?
Yes, that’s right, your object of deep affection, George W. Bush proposed nearly $127 Billion in federally supported R&D. About $29 Billion of that was for health related R&D.
Oh, and for the record, Dugger…last time I checked, George W. Bush is not a Democrat.
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf05322/
I’ll call you the “Queen” of overstatement.
To paraphrase Frank…”I guess you never went to college.”
Regardless, you just backed yourself into a serious corner that even smart people couldn’t find their way out of. What in the world are you going to do?
JK
You are going down, Frank.
For someone who undeservedly prides himself in being a genius (without ever exhibiting said genius on these threads), you say some pretty stupid stuff.
I’m not going to Australia, numbnuts. I don’t want to, and, of course, no one but a lunatic would think it was possible to get me to go there. Get my drift?
And just how do you think “I’m going down”? What is your strategy for that endeavor? Voodoo? Thought transference? Go out and train a group of convicts, on the promise of amnesty, to come and get me? Oh, wait… That’s the plot of “The Dirty Dozen.”
JK, your übermensch proclivities are making you more and more delusional each day.
As for “betraying you and your liberal colleagues [colleagues? the pretension reeks like cheap perfume] here by calling you every name in the book,” I defy you to go back through every single thread in which I ever participated, and find a comment where I called someone a name, before I was called a name. I issued that same challenge to some other liberal on these threads weeks ago, and he still hasn’t found one. And you won’t, either.
And you shouldn’t feel betrayed just because you impersonated a human being for a few brief minutes, and now feel compelled to revert to your true obnoxious, pretentipus, arrogant, condescending self. I didn’t make you a prick. You did that all by yourself.
And the very idea that you call me insensitive, while making a statement like this: I have a feeling that Frank has some very old, very sick, and very rich relatives, would be laughable, were it not so obscene and grotesque. You’ve already forgotten the origin of the “Australia meme”, haven’t you? It originated in your philistine insensitivity.
So, once again, JK, the prized and coveted “Golden Swatzika” goes to you for unabashedly expressing feelings of superiority towards someone you don’t even know, simply because they disagree with you; for sincerely wishing I would leave the country, because I don’t agree with you, and for simply being an arrogant wannabe Nazi prick.
.
JK,
You presume and assume without a semblance of coherence. Myself, I’m not pro-Bush but anti Bush-hate and that hate is sick enough, virulent enough, pervasive enough to be worth fighting. IMO, Bush spends more like a Democrat than my type of Republican. In terms of governance, Bush and CLinton are very close.
And the point stands: the federal government’s decision not to seize money from working people and give it to a particular cause, no matter how worthy, is not a prohibition of that cause.
Its the people’s money, not the government. You may be shocked JK, but the problem of governing is not a matter of just deciding to fund everything. There are not enough resources for everything.
Dugger, Try the real world for a while and we’ll have a conservative in five years
Dugger,
One more thing.
Do you oppose federal funding of biomedical research?
Yes, or no?
JK
Frank,
That’s a long rant. One should be careful not to abuse other people’s free bandwith.
Again, I want to make it clear to the forum that I don’t think Frank should necessarily leave for Austrailia. It’s just that I strongly believe the country would be better off, and most importantly, me, personally, were he to leave. His Anti-American rants are alone enough to justify such a migration, but I think the important point in all of this is getting lost: Austrailia has a lot of wide open, unoccupied space. Frank needs to be isolated from other human beings.
For a passing moment, I saw some redeeming quality in Frank.
For a moment.
JK
Dugger,
The funniest part about both of your responses is that you never addressed my point, which had nothing to do with tax policy, really.
It was about science. Do you dispute that a lot of the best science that comes out of this country is funded by the federal government, and is used by corporate America to advance medicine? If you dispute that, could you show some evidence to the contrary?
Could you please answer the question?
JK
JK : Since you note, so utterly eloquently, how President Bush is already funding this, how exactly would Oliver’s proposed talking point work, without being an utter bald faced lie ?
“There are not enough resources for everything.”
You’re a genius Dugger. That’s why they call them “budget priorities.” Me? I favor funding potentially life saving research over yet another faulty, redundant multi-billion dollar weapons system. That’s because I live in hope. Naturally you prefer the multi-billion weapons system designed to defeat an enemy we will never ever fight. That’s because you live in paranoid fear (and you’re a fascist to boot!).
JD, Oliver’s talking point stands firm. The President does in fact, oppose the use of federal funding for stem-cell research, as do many conservatives.
Bush does not oppose the use of federaly funded dollars for biomedical research-just not the stem-cell variety.
From a purely economic standpoint, the irony of it all is that the U.S. stands to lose BILLIONS in intellectual property rights to other nations that will leapfrog ahead of us on stem-cell. (Eg; Great Britain.)
From a humanitarian angle, to come out against federal funding of basic biomedical research would be akin to saying “I don’t care about sick people. If they really are worth keeping alive, the free-market will make that determination.”
I’d like to think of myself as quite a bit more progressive on that issue. I have faith in science, and certainly, the *very* bright, young pool of talent that occupies our University system.
Frank would rather focus on making sure that we’re not keeping rich and old people alive. Dugger’s off on some rant about funding “everything.” As if that old Dog has a thing to do with the complexities of biomedical research.
JK
That s why they call them budget priorities. Me? I favor funding potentially life saving research over yet another faulty, redundant multi-billion dollar weapons system.
Or faith-based initiatives. Or fraudulent payments to Halliburton et al.
Anybody who thinks that this:
Again, I want to make it clear to the forum that I don t think Frank should necessarily leave for Austrailia.
is somehow different from this:
It s just that I strongly believe the country would be better off, and most importantly, me, personally, were he to leave.
Has no concept of how to use the English.
Anyone who thinks that other people believe there’s a difference is a damn fool.
JK
Fair enough questions. Don’t want to hedge but a simple yes or no is not possible. In principle if the money were available, I would definitely support (Fedreal) funding of biomedical (and other) research, but its a matter of priorities. As I tried to illustrate to you, deciding to fund something is way too easy and cheap. We all can do that. Where does the money come from? What other programs get cut? How much more does the Iowa farmer or the LA car washer or the Georgia appraiser have to work to pay for our easy armchair decisions?
And I do not deny that good results (and waste) have come from Federal funding of programs. In general, my personal experience is that the Federal government is a very inefficient program manager – as compared to most of industry. But still, if the money were there, I would definitely support most forms of research and I would love to see us commit to putting a man on mars (would cost an ‘unconservative’ bundle).
Dugger
For a passing moment, I saw some redeeming quality in Frank.
Assuming someone who possesses no redeeming qualities would recognize any were he to stumble upon them, it would then be necessary for me to care.
Not in this life, you arrogant wannabe Nazi prick
I must admit that you raise one valid point, though, JK…
I’m sure I would like America better if everyone I didn’t like left America.
But I don’t think even Australia has room for 90+ million liberals.
And, of course, I’m not an arrogant wannabe Nazi prick, like, uh… you.
I hate when you and Mom fight!
“But still, if the money were there, I would definitely support most forms of research…”
Dugger says this, of course, as if we weren’t wasting billions of dollars in Iraq. Gee, I don’t know where all the money went, darn that inefficiency. Again, Dugs, its priorities. Bush’s are a disaster.
“I m not an arrogant wannabe Nazi prick”
Sure you aren’t frank. Sure you aren’t.
duros62: Then speak to the resident übermensch. He’s the one who raised the issue about a half dozen times.
Frank…a journey begins with a single step.
I don’t want everyone on the right to leave the country, at this time. Just you.
Get out. You’re wasting valuable northern hemisphere oxgen.
JK
Swell, JK… Come up here and put me out…
I live at
1 Odell Place #3C
New Rochelle NY 10801
I’ll be waiting for you, you punk.
You’re real brave on the other side of a keyboard, at the other end of the internet. But I’m sure I’m not the only one who knows you’re a gutless wonder, who’s probably wacking off, every time I get angry. Just like when your mother beats you.
You want me to go? Now you know what you have to do to make it happen… Otherwise, you’re just a weenie with a big mouth.
Frank, you are seriously mentally imbalanced. Seriously. Please get help before you hurt yourself or your family.
It takes severe illness to challenge fights over the internet, and this isn’t the only time you’ve done it. I remember when I was a lurker you challenging board members to fight on some Manhattan street corner.
It’s time to stop. Before you go off into one of your “he did it first rants”, please do some self-reflection first. Also remember, you may run into someone else that is as ill as you are, someone that is not as old as you are, someone who could severely hurt you. Consider your family if not yourself.
factcheck: While I’m not proud of myself, I’ve had it with that jerk, and I have no plans to leave the blog because of him. If there’s a better way to shut him up, i’m open to suggestions.
And I don’t need therapy from someone who can’t even use their real name on an anonymous message board.
Instead of fighting a losing battle against someone who is, most probably, laughing at you right now, maybe you need to reflect on what allowed him to take control of you.
Damn, Frank. You’re really nuts.
If he’s “laughing at me right now”, then he’s sicker than even I thought he was. You’re right, though, he is “renting space in my head.”
Frank it’s an open forum. There’s no such as “unwelcome” in a public forum. Either you can take it or you can’t. Obviously you can’t.
Another (totally unwelcome) county heard from.
You;ve got a comment about everything I say, don’t you. I meant unwelcome by me. Unlike some other people around here, I have never claimed to speak for anyone but myself.
As to whether or not I can take it, that’s not really an important question.
The important question is why you keep “dishing it out.”
“The important question is why you keep dishing it out.
Because you’re an idiot.
Good answer, frameone. And I thought you were going to say something unintelligent. You never disappoint.
But Frank what could one possibly say to you? You’ve just put your home address on the internet in some tough challenge because you think that JK really, really means to make you leave the country. I mean seriously. That’s nuts, dude. Besides, maybe you should try Australia. Anywhere in the Outback has got to be better than living under a freeway:
http://maps.google.com/maps?oi=map&q=1+Odell+Place+3c,+New+Rochelle,+NY+10801
Where else would a troll live, frame, but under a bridge?
Yes, factcheck, once again your handle belies your abilities. You may have noticed that the Street Name is not visible on the Map (Hint: That was a hint).
Um, zoom in Frank.
BTW, fastcheck a highway is not a bridge, and if you knew how to use a Google Map, you would see that I don’t live under either one.
If you have any other questions about Google or Google Tools, feel free to ask, or see here:
http://www.google.com/options/index.html
Priceless.
For real fun, I prefer Mapquest.
Frank, again making the mistake that anyone gives a damn about his life. Looking for love in all the wrong places.
And that means what exactly Frank?