Strings Attached to MO Life Science Funding: Blame Amendment 2
A column in the KC Star grouses that the state is funding life sciences research into animal and plant experiments, but not human studies. From the column by Jason Gertzen:
The Missouri General Assembly created the trust fund and the grant program a few years ago. It was one of the ways state leaders decided to use the several billion dollars Missouri ultimately is to receive from its portion of the tobacco settlement.That may be. But the Stowers Institute Crowd, who bought and paid for their own constitutional amendment known as Amendment 2 , is responsible for these restrictions. You see, the amendment not only created a constitutional right to perform human cloning in Missouri--accurately defined as the creation of human embryos via SCNT--but it created an explicit non discrimination policy that required human embryonic stem cell research to be funded if other forms of human stem cell research receive state money. So, because of this overreaching and arrogance, the opponents of ESCR and human SCNT just didn't fund human research in order to ensure that state money would not have to be paid toward what they consider to be unethical and immoral experiments.But only earlier this year did lawmakers pump money into the trust fund for the first time. When they did so, the program was restricted to funding plant or animal projects. Some lawmakers expressed concern about state dollars paying for human embryonic stem-cell research...
The rules of the grant program could be changed so that the human health restrictions are not so broad, Duncan said. "There is a lot of human health research that could be done that has nothing to do with embryonic stem-cell research," Duncan said. "To provide those restrictions is a bit stifling."
Gertzen should have placed the blame where it belongs--on overreaching by Amendment 2's authors.
Labels: Amendment 2. Fallout.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 6:18 PM
3 Comments
3 Comments:
Wesley, You need to follow the entire trail . Don't stop midway at the Stowers doorstep just because it’s a convenient place for you to unfurl your banner. Look at the problem from both sides to be fair and accurate.
Not once cent of taxpayer dollars has been used to fund HESCr, yet you USE this as an excuse to blame science?! However holding human medical research hostage because some money may go to HESCr is a gross misuse of authority and negligence of the offices these people swore to uphold. Now to turn around and blame this on the institutions who are merely protecting their rights under law is just absurd. Absolutely Absurd!
The reality is that the reason amendment 2 exists in the first place is that for the last 8 years a pair of State Senators - Bartle and Lembke proposed legislation that would make criminals of any scientist using SCNT on HESC to research human disease. Have a look at SB160 proposed by Bartle to see why amendment 2 was drafted in the first place. http://www.senate.mo.gov/05info/BTS_Web/Bill.aspx?SessionType=R&BillID=4746.
According to a recent Washington University newspaper Student Life.
"Two top researchers at
the Harvard Stem Cell Institute,
Kevin Eggan and Chad Cowen,
had agreed to move to Missouri
but have since put their plans on
hold."
"Harvard and Stanford are better
equipped to attract the nation’s
best researchers because
these universities are situated in
states with more conducive political climates."
http://www.studlife.com/media/paper337/documents/3z55ru7n.pdf (6mb download)
The result of this assault on Science was to pass Amendment 2 which allows Missouri the same rights as other states to follow federal laws regarding ES research. While at the same time allowing Missouri to recruit the top scientists in the world. Eggan and Cowen’s hesitation to invest their lives and research in Missouri are two prime examples of how anti-research movement must be halted in order to promote research in our state.
To try and paint this as a story of using tax dollars to fund research is ignoring the primary reasons for Amendment 2. It’s just not accurate. However,
by not funding any human research they are ignoring the law, approved by a majority of people who voted their will that human research INCLUDING SCNT should be a part of our state funding. Just because you may not agree with a law doesn’t give you the right to ignore the law or the people who mandated the law. Otherwise no law would be worthy of respect, and where is the morality in this?
The fact is that however slight, the MAJORITY of people in Missouri SUPPORT our ability to operate with the same freedoms afforded to other states, and thus voted to protect those rights through Amendment 2.
The reason amendment 2 exists is not to suck money out of people pockets, the reason is to provide a hospitable environment for the growth of the bioscience industry in MO, to provide jobs, tax base, industry, highly intelligent teachers, research , cures and to establish Missouri as a hub for leading the best Bioscience industry in the world.
Dark Swan: They could have left it at legalizing SCNT. But no. They added the non discrimination clause and thus guaranteed that legislators would not finance research that could be construed as requiring ESCR or SCNT to be funded.
Moreover, the attempts to outlaw all human cloning would not have outlawed any ESCR. It would have prohibited creating cloned embryos. I proudly testified in favor of that bill. It would have made MO law similar to laws in place in such big, bad, science-hating places like Canada, France, and Germany, which also outlaw all human cloning. And Michigan, which has a thriving biotech sector as it has outlawed all human cloning.
That effort will continue throughout this country.
A 2 passed by deception, astonishing media bias, and the deep pockets of Mr. Stowers. Yet it barely passed. One more week and it would have lost because people were onto the fact that it legalized human cloning, while pretending it didn't. And that is why the issue will not go away.
They added the non discrimination clause and thus guaranteed that legislators would not finance research
So you're saying the Stowers finaced an amendment that would guarantee their research would not receive public funding. Now your just talking a whole lot of nonsense Wesley. Why dont you just say the Stowers promoted Amendment 2 in order to guarantee that no human research is funded in Missouri - how do you expect anyone to take that viewpoint seriously?
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