Media/Obama Conflate Ethics Disputes with "Science"
The media--and I must say, the new Administration--continue to confuse and conflate policy differences with science. And the lifting of the Bush funding restrictions on ESCR is providing the excuse. From the story:
The decision by President George W. Bush to restrict funding for stem cell research has been seen by critics as part of a pattern of allowing political ideology to influence scientific decisions across an array of issues, from climate change to whether to approve the morning-after pill Plan B for over-the-counter sales.Those are all policy disputes--which belong in the political realm--not science issues. ESCR restrictions were based on important ethical issues. So too Plan B. There isn't a "science" position on whether a powerful contraceptive should be able to be purchased by teenagers as easily as candy and aspirin. The closest to a bona fide science dispute in the above examples is global warming, but the people who are the most "political" are those who say there is no further scientific debate on whether it is happening and whether it is human-caused--when that is patently false.
The MSM and the Science Establishment are part of the Liberal Establishment that wants to take us in certain directions politically and culturally. That's fine, if they were only honest about it. But they don't have the candor to admit they are as political and ideological as their opponents. Instead, they pretend they are objective, indeed, scientific. That may be a good political tactic, but nothing could be further from the truth.
Labels: Political. Science. Media.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 7:48 PM
20 Comments
20 Comments:
Since I'm on a hot streak at getting things published, I've already fired a letter to the editor at the WASH. POST. Wish me luck:
In December, you can find cultural conservatives griping about the "war on Christmas." For the past few years, the left has had its own complaints about the Bush Administration's "war on science." Neither war ever existed.
The charge that Bush was hostile to science reared its persistent head once again in Rob Stein's March 9 piece about stem-cell research. All Bush sought to do was to make sure that science and ethics co-exist peacefully. Since we know (from SCIENCE) that human embryos are human beings, it's not all that much of a leap to want to ensure that said embryonic human beings are treated ethically -- i.e. that they aren't destroyed. Those who didn't get their wish for stem-cell research completely free of any ethical guidelines then created the straw-man argument of a "war on science." But a disagreement on policy doth not a war make.
The minute I heard that its going to be reviewed by an "ethics panel" or something like that I knew it's fake. The agenda and hypocrisy are transparent. One just hears it, and feels it, and knows.
How many executive orders is this guy going to issue? There's never been anything like this executive order syndrome of his. One on the hells of another.
Heard William May say "culture of death" as he was interviewed on ABC overnight news. Until I saw that it was he the next time it aired, I thought it might be SHS.
Lanthe, I agree about the "ethics panel." What is an ethics panel any more? Good luck BMMG39. When people ask what they can do, this is one of the first places to start.
have the candor to admit they are as political and ideological as their opponents. Instead, they pretend they are objective, indeed, scientific. That may be a good political tactic, but nothing could be further from the truth.
...and the converse is true for Wesley and many of this blogs readers. Wesley takes a political/moral view and tries to use opinion to speak to the validity of the science being performed by calling research they dont like HYPE!
Heck, most you all cant even admit the basic fact Obama is lifting the BAN that Bush put on creating Embryonic Stem cell lines.
DS: You can't read? I wrote "And the lifting of the Bush funding restrictions," in this post. That is accurate and precise.
Bush didn't ban ESCR funding, he restricted the stem cell lines that would be eligible for federal funding. Indeed, the NIH gave about $160 million in grants for it during his Administration, and billions were spent from other sources.
Hence, you object to accuracy.
@DS:
In my reading, Wesley is not "calling research [he] doesn't like HYPE"; he's calling this research unethical or WRONG.
Aside from the ethics:
ESCR has indeed been 'hyped' over other forms of stem cell research. The scientific fact is that adult stem cells have been in use for years in curing diseases and helping people, while ESCR projects are barely ready for human trials.
Wesley correctly points out that Bush didn't "ban ESCR funding"; he banned taxpayer ESCR funding. If ESCR was such a great opportunity and sure-fire investment with breakthrough cures just around the corner (Anyone remember John Edwards: "Vote for John Kerry and Christopher Reeve will walk again!!!"), private capital would have flooded their direction and made the debate moot. As it is, all that venture capital was more prudently and profitably directed toward adult stem cell research, which has been successful.
The reason ESCR researchers clamor for public funding is that they can't enough private money for their projects.
to be even more accurate
Obama is lifting the ban for federal funding that Bush placed on scientists creating Embryonic Stem Cell lines in their research.
Wesley, I was not directing that comment as an affront to your thread. I was anticipating the stale arguments I often receive from a few posters here who consistently attack my semantics... such as bmmg calling me a liar and lazy for using the word ban to describe the fact that scientists would receive no fed funding on any research that created embryonic stem cell lines.
bmmg39 said...
Two lies in one sentence: that Bush banned federal funding and that he has prolonged human suffering...
There was no ban. A limit on the stem-cell lines eligible for federal funding, yes. A ban is something else altogether. I guess it makes it easier for lazy and/or dishonest reporters (of whom you are a de facto member) to call it a "ban"
http://www.wesleyjsmith.com/blog/2009/01/geron-escr-drug-approved-for-human.html
So my response is to say, Yes Bush did ban funding for creating any ESC lines. Pretty simple fact. You can call it a restriction too, which is also accurate, but some intolerant posters here need to get off my ass for choosing my own words. Too bad for bmmg he never had a meaningful point in the midst - but I've come to expect nothing of substance from him.
A restriction means that there is some option for creating ESCs, Bush's ban left zero option for creating stem cell lines.
Hope that clears it up.
Obama Ends Ban on Stem Cell Research
President Obama Undoes Embryonic Stem Cell Ban, Pushes "Scientific Integrity"
Obama signs order lifting stem-cell ban
What The Stem Cell Ban Reversal Means For You
President Obama Reverses Bush's Stem Cell Research Ban
In my reading, Wesley is not "calling research [he] doesn't like HYPE"; he's calling this research unethical or WRONG.
Kathleen that is often my point. Wesley says he is in this for moral consideration only, but in the past consistently questioned the validity of the science to deliver on its promise of cures and relief from disease. That is obviously speaking directly to the Science not the moral.
I'm absolutely fine with people coming out and saying that they are opposed to ESCr because it goes against their religious or moral conviction. Its when they wrap it in a veil of anti-science disinformation that I take offense.
So its a valid contradiction to point out. Though I see there is more mindful wording used as of late now that the ESC ball is beginning to roll.
The scientific fact is that adult stem cells have been in use for years in curing diseases and helping people, while ESCR projects are barely ready for human trials.
What disease have ASCs cured? Trick question.
It is only the cacophony of the pro-life/anti-ESCr crowd who cheerlead attempts to "keep score" of one success against another.
No peer respected scientist would stoop to the level of saying that Adult Stem Cells should not be researched because of ESCs, if you find one, post the documentation.
There should be more current trials using ASCs than ESCs. Considering the fact that ASCr has been in existence for 50 years and ESCr is about 10 years old. Given and eqaul amount of time ESCr deserves another 40 years before you compare them to ASCr therapies of today if you like.
However, I have long maintained that ASCr and ESCr are not competing technologies, but ultimately one in the same and that each should be approached with vigor. A far contrast from Wesley's approach.
Though opposed to mans' tampering with the elemental form of the elements I find Mr. Obama's decision philosophically sound as it is the narrow incentives of the political economic face's of mankinds endeavors that funnel curiosities about the world into a directed narrow stream of immediate incentives and practicalities oriented specifically to cure the woes suffered by nature. This might not change if the hand of government is applied to control regardless of the ethics or correctness of science applications. Such changes must come from the scientists themselves. If Socrates is correct in his statement that "if one knows the truth he will act accordingly" I think that the truth is this case is not known to scientists, much less the populace that perceived a practical gain from descriptions of the nature of the research, if it can be accomplished without sacrificing embryos, though perceived that way is not a the real question regarding mankind and nature, and the possible natural ethic that exists.
I am a PhD biochemist, never worked who has had time to reflect to these issues ,the nature of science investigations, and its' misconceptions and missing knowing, even among the most reflective and respected experts. Science study, its' investigations are indeed intriguing, absorbing, promising the appliction of good intentions. it also, today’s’ science, relies on abstracted theories for which no direct verification is possible. Can one actually weigh an electron? What is it, a point of light, energy? as it might be visualized, but it is also postulated to release light energy and in no more a point of energy than color might be a color. Experiment says abstracted ideas explain observation, but the ideas refer to things that are beyond observability. These types of theory are all self subscribing, self supporting; proclamation that could be hardly immiscible with the proclamations of government and come to cloud the eyes of the scientists considerably upon the involvement of political authority. Today scientist pursue a full scale multifaceted military like assault on nature as the source of woe sufferings and disease in a blinded state that places mankind, in the same boat, necessarily a self target of his own prescribed scholastically oriented self denigrations in the name of total objectivity.
Lastly, as I do not have faith that scientists will come around to common sense, the hand of government upon will do no good also, I will state my reasoning in another way that may be more accessible to the common person.
Nature occurs as a genetic process, the process of change, emergence, presenting more and more exceptions to theory daily, not understood in the framework of modern science, though a loosening is taking place to view things more fluidly up to a point, we are all still in the dark. Essentially nature proceeds as men perceive themselves to proceed, father/mother to son, the nature of the parents ,their parents prescribe the nature of their offspring. In a big view men/women give birth to men/women but science in subtle confusions forgets these simple facts of life. The hand of men in the scientific manipulation of human biology and genetics ,especially at the miniature level of genes, or the physicist withthe energy (glue) of the atom, becomes also factor, component of the succeeding stages. His hand and ideas a genetic element, applied willfully as an instrument of change. What might that produce? regardless of what a consortium of the most intelligent and accomplished of scientists and experts, is unknown and cannot be beneficial as what is contained in the scientists hands has already come about, is a push backwards, and intervening element in the free courses of nature applied in an manner in which the scientist does not really have explanation for such things as cognition, consciousness , thinking, intelligence; researches these topic in the same ignorant manner, and has no conception of himself as mirror of nature, rather as a special example in which a forceful, push and shove, battle of who mirrors what is occurring. This is not a handsome behavior .
Though discussed in the earliest writing of civilization, in Plato, society has pursued more the statistically suggestive approaches of Aristotle, but an issue that is beyond the observed high human populations and mankinds’ civilization is at hand that I believe involves a chronic environmental issue-as immunological issues refer to what is against the self, cannot a physical/structural deterioration be called immunological , and is it not where a vast amount of knowledge has been gained that one should seek to apply it to effect further negative structural adjustment , rather than to seek to find and assault a potentially unique problem for which we might have treatment and remedies already available. Many modern scholars are active seeking clues to mankinds’ past in evidences from old civilizations but receive a small fraction of the funding as they border more on the serendipitous, chance, discovery rather than direct practicality with a greater probability of returns, though all life is commonly known as only a happenstance of events. It is admirable that, far be it, for the hands of transient leader to proclaim it so as law. Governments of the people obviously is not the same as people of the government. I had on occasion had to panhandle for street change to survive and received on one occasion, other than coins, the statement “real change comes from within”.
kirsh2152000: Welcome to SHS. I think you are saying that science is getting too big for its britches. I agree.
"Too bad for bmmg he never had a meaningful point in the midst - but I've come to expect nothing of substance from him."
Let's see now...an inveterate liar expects "nothing of substance" from me. Looks like I'm doing pretty well!
"A restriction means that there is some option for creating ESCs, Bush's ban left zero option for creating stem cell lines."
Liar.
Researchers were free to create as many ESC lines as they wanted, with the private money that would be flooding in if investors saw any value in (and no ethical problem with). Of course, savvy people tend to investigate before plunking money into something, and investors rightly see ESCR as more of a dead end, which is why the bulk of investor money is headed towards NON-embryonic research (and, further, why ESCR scientists are clamoring for PUBLIC money).
"Hope that clears it up.
Obama Ends Ban on Stem Cell Research"
Yeah. Quote from the mainstream media's headlines, written by people who don't grasp the issue any better than you do. THAT'LL impress us...
Politics doesn't mind melding with science; it thinks it's taking a step up in the world when it does that. Because ever since WWII (thanks to the real intention of the Nuremberg Code, which as far as I'm concerned is even more of a disaster than the U.N.), science has been elevated far above its rightful station and people have "looked up to" it. Not that trouble didn't start in science long ago, but for quite a while there were also the humanities keepig things in balance. No more, and look what we've got. Science corrupts, and absolute science corrupts absolutely.
TWEET! Dark Swan and bmmg, please no name calling. Let your ideas and facts persuade. Thank you. Carry on.
LOL OK who called bm anything? I just warned you that's what I was expecting, and he didn't fail to deliver.
bmmg refute this, as posted -
"to be even more accurate
Obama is lifting the ban for federal funding that Bush placed on scientists creating Embryonic Stem Cell lines in their research."
Try taking the whole concept on.
The fact that you can't read a paragraph or so without twisting it out of context speaks volumes about things I was just asked not to criticize you about. L8.
THAT would be, at least, closer to the truth. So why doesn't the headline make that clear? I've worked for a newspaper. If the story is about an ordinance forbidding people to throw their used chewing gum onto the ground, the headline should NOT read, "Lawmakers Debate Chewing-Gum Ban."
SHS: GREAT ART!!
REAL CHANGE COMES FROM WITHIN
Any thing has many faces, partly modulated by its' past history. In the expression "The Art of Nature" art is conversely defined as artifact-etc. man made. Man can only do his own perspective "artwork" on nature from the faces he perceives which are necessarily less than whole. The faces we know of nature come as reflections that comsume only particulars-places, events, numbers) and not theory, complcated description we assemble and call theory. To effect change upon something means essentially to assume a role in intercourse with it as a parent to what is birthed. You can not only assume this is "a big for its' britches" endeavor, but our "actual" mating partner is a thin air and the stresses and suffering we receive from nature. it is currently disputed in philosophical circles, in essense, whether such mating with thin air can yield actual physical change-i.e. is a person,a child able to effect changes to whole-can a child playing innocently with elements accessible to him hurt himself. Is nature a fluidly changable, conformable,resilent, entity that to that which fills its' spaces.
I do not think the potential existance of ( as I think) an actually existing non thin air,unique and single natural physical obstruction (lending us a bad turn), a actual focus for our frustrations has been intellectually reflected on as distinct from a (unconceived) healthy nature and its' normal processes, as we effect our big britches around on the world itself.
Academic freedoms are important, any applied controls should not fall within the role of government unless they violate the courts. I do however believe that tampering with the rudiments of nature may ultimately not only not put change iin our pockets but leave us with no pockets. Nature does ot mirror us,we mirror it. Our hands upon nature render its' deductively found open routes of cause and effect induced by man, in our likeness, as the new genetic parents to what ensues upon our manipulation. Nature does not have a fixed picture for our intercourses. Time, the progression from generation to generation is not understood , its' esential meaning rationalized based on desire to have a scientific non sexual conceiver.
I know that some of our language usages (possesing answers also) can seem to lose life,die, but this is only a (threatening)feeling -nature can accomodate multiple meaning, why not if we are but a reflection of it? it cannot though accomodate assault from re (or falsely) -referenced frustrations.
Real Change Comes From Within (CONT)
Though I stated in earlier comments my views on genetic tampering I can also sympathise deeply with those who know that science has the potential to alleviate terrible suffering. With regards to this, criteria for what constitutes "dangereous tampering" is open. Immanuel Velikovsky a psychoanalyst and correspondant with Einstein, believed that all history was the product of transiently occuring, unnoticed events-i.e.-dust flying in the eye produces a sore that eventually leads distorts visual perspective and leads to a scintitific outlook and career as an artist painting perspectives. I would not apply my argument for illegal genetic tampering to the activity of finding and moving the dust particle whose initial event and cure both can possibly come about by (witnessable) happenstance. Diabetes can conceivably happen from material lodging under the skin. The important fact in these issues involves the discrimination between normal physioloogical adjustments to the dust, and the presence of the dust itself. One cannot, should not think to attempt to change the genetics and biochemistry of insulin metabolism as the disease may be not the result of a problem with it though a relief of suffering might be possible with this stragety-but is a dangerous tampering. I think it is possible that scientists might find that nature committs few flaws or errors, and that all that is ever observed,maybe all that is possible to occur, is adjustment to stress;in this probable event scientists would regret effecting actual changes. The actions of stem cells could conceivable be to evict, for example, an invaded dust particle. To breed stem cells or clone them specifically though may be to tread a dangerous ground if one seeks to effect directed changes in genetic development. To re-expose individuals to their own non genetically manipulated cells maybe less dangerous. To think to create embryos or use embryos for sacrifice to acquire stem cells is obviously not moral, a squandering abuse of life, of the gift of life. I think it is at "happenstance" that one can perceive a dividing line between urges to repetitively control based on a found luck and the amount of expense and energy force that one applies to effect a control-amount of applied force verses allowance of freedom for adjustment.This is just a thought experiment,potential example, but one must always keep his own balance in the seas of vices that rise and fall with history not to apply a vice(grip)to nature.
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