Embryonic Stem Cells

I have been holding back again. I listened to Bill Maher's show last week (13 March) and there was one major discussion point that stuck in my craw.

Embryonic Stem cells.

Andrew Breitbart made a lot of what some would call mistakes in his rhetoric. I prefer to call them falsehoods or lies.

Andrew Breitbart: In 2001 George W. Bush gave the most nuanced speech of his presidency.
Reality: Not much competition for this medal. But the problem with the speech is that it had nothing to do with ethcial reasoning, and relied heavily on morality. His fundamental argument breaks down because to go the path of potential for life to define what is life, you are saying that masturbation is mass murder and all women are serial killers. Nuanced, perhaps. Rational, not really. Unfortunately Obama seems to hold the same line of non-reason in his opposition to human reproductive cloning.

AB: Bush had a balanced panel of bioethicists.
R: It was so balanced that it included people who knew jack shit about bioethics like theologian William F. May (not a secular humanist as Andy claimed they all were). Which didn't really matter as dubya made his policies before consulting with the panel. Technically it's somewhat true, but in reality, not so true.

AB: George W. Bush was the first president to fund stem cell research.
R: William Clinton was the first president to fund stem cell research in 1993.

AB: Adult stem cells and umbilical cord treatments have led to 72 treatments and the only thing we have from Embryonic Stem Cell research is a boy with tumors all over his body in Britain.
R: The tumors are in his brain, he was prone to tumors to begin with, and he was treated in Russian team that had no clue what they were doing. The boy's condition wasn't conducive to potential stem cell treatment to begin with, and his predisposition towards tumors made the endeavor very unethical. As far as possible treatments, there has been progress in the fields of spinal cord injury, diabetes, Heart Disease, Parkinson's Disease, Alzheimer's Disease, Lou Gehrig's Disease, Lung Disease, Arthritis, Sickle Cell Anemia, organ failure, etc. With genetic diseases it is preferable to have donor cells rather than patient cells to prevent recurrance of the condition. With organ failure it is important to be able to have organs on demand, thus, in an emergency situation you don't have much choice. Tissue engineering, in which full organs may eventually be created in the lab without a host, has major potential, but requires Embryonic Stem Cells to meet its full potential. While other stem cells have already shown great potential, the cell line limitation and lack of funding for embryonic stem cell research has prevented advancement. So, like going back to the moon, it is a political problem, not a scientific one.

AB: Nobody is willing to fund Embryonic Stem Cell Research.
R: Most research, especially in emerging fields, is funded in part if not primarily through public funds. That, and the unethical ban on new cell lines has led to a complete stagnation of the field while researchers in the field went on to research with less promise but more funding.

AB: Induced pluripotent cells are just as good if not better than embryonic stem cells. (He didn't know what they were called)
R: Not even Takahashi and Yamanaka, the two leading researchers in the field, think that is true. They have potential, but are still nowhere near the potential of embryonic stem cells according to the Japanese pair. Beyond that, the current method for creating Induced Stem Cells has a high likelihood of resulting in Cancer due to the way in which they are produced.

This isn't the exact order he spoke them in as I had to clump them in a way that made more sense. But, his entire arrgument was a fallacy. His tagline, "I'm not stopping you from funding this," is the Ayn Rand/ Friedman fallacy that freedom is the ability to be privately funded. The problem is that most of the benefits from science that we enjoy are from blue sky research. Research with no marketable goal, but which eventually lead to marketable conclusions. But, if there is no marketable goal, then there is no market funds, which means that a market only science society is inherrently more poor than a society that allows gov't funding of research.

Now, I understand that not many people have a deep knowledge of stem cells. Especially those like dubya and Andy of the anti-intellectual right, the remnant of the nineteenth century no nothings one might argue. But, he seems to know enough propaganda to make false arguments and is just too lazy to check his facts.

Embryonic stem cells have a potential unmet by other potential pluripotent cell sources, and needs to be funded by the gov't. Not to do so, or to put limits such as no new stem cells or no research into reproductive cloning, is thoroughly unethical.