All you have to remember is that everything is bad UNTIL someone makes money off of it. If it's privately done, it's good. If it has anything to do with science, it's bad, unless someone makes money off of it.

Should that person/people making money off of it happen to be a Gooper supporter, that makes it VERY, VERY good.

Everything is polarized, no matter how small it might be. Right is good, left is bad.

That is what it comes down to.

Yes, there are some who are theocratically inclined. Yes, there are those who actually believe their own bullshit. But I think those are few and far between.

It all comes down to left v. right. Good v. bad.

I wonder if people with this extremist world view will also forgo any therapies that may result from stem cell research a few years down the road.

I like the idea of a "reverse wedge" (though not the name - like "reverse racism," it's really a counterattack, not a reversal). This could be helpful with getting out the vote in the Midwest and West.

This entire politicization of science is so misguided, so wrong, so stupid that it makes me spit. I am in the med research area, although not in stem cells. I can tell you WITHOUT A DOUBT that the research is going FULL SPEED AHEAD in Germany, S Korea, China, and 40 other countries. Stem cell research has a cheap start up cost. You can start a lab for a pittance - 1-2 million max, and get a huge bang for your buck.

This will cost us soon. We are LOSING the race for advances in biological science. The stem cell thing requires a constriction and change and this is not helping us.

Next step for 2012
Ban IVF. It causes multiple humans to be discarded.

Barren parents must accept that God doesn't want them to have children of their own and is fairly obviously telling them to adopt children so that excuse fort abortion will be removed.

With the end to birth control, there will be plenty of babies needing adoption too because of all the heathens who fail to stay virgins until marriage.

The only wedge is the one that needs to be driven between these wooden heads who want to retrograde human progress.

Maybe they want a king back too to tell them what to do. Jesus wept. God gave us free will why aren't we using it?

This issue never fails to utterly astound me. It is okay to toss the fetus into the garbage can. In fact, tossing the fetus in the garbage can is preferable to using it to create something that will save lives.

But organ donation is okay. The tissue of anything that has exited from the womb is no longer sacred. You can use mature tissue to save lives, but fetal tissue must be treated as garbage because it is sacred.

It would be a much more coherent policy to ban IVF altogether.

@POed Lib:

You're absolutely right. I do bench research for ways to ameliorate a disease--Spinal Muscular Atrophy--which is the #1 genetically-caused death of infants in the US. It's a disease which is purely caused by a genetic mutation, which means that we can't cure it right now, but we're within a stone's throw of being able to use stem cells to help these kids. Why, WHY are the religious right able to understand the sanctity of life in the womb but couldn't care less about it once it's born. Unless, of course, it's to send them into war.

There are times I despair. . .

Our gold medal winner on the 10K swimming survived his leukemia in 2001 because of stem cell therapie. I'm very happy that I donated the embryo's we couldn't use for our IVF to research.

@Toowearyforoutrage

That sounds just like the book I once read (it was movie too but not that good) by Margaret Atwood, called The Handmaid's Tale. For anyone who wants to see a vision of when all women's rights are removed, do read this book. Guaranteed chills.

"The Bush White House has said embryos are human life, and deserve respect"

But kids who rely on SCHIP to stay healthy?

Fuck 'em. That costs too much.

Sullivan - "...It is an intensification -- not a rebuke -- of the Bush-Cheney model of conservatism.""

Riiiiiiight !

So no more Mr. McSame cuz it's really McWorse.

This guy only has one oar! (to row his boat full of whores)

...And a boat with only one oar - just spins.

"Just to clarify, recent advances suggest the debate over embryonic stem-cell research may become moot."

No, they don't. That's right-wing Christianist propaganda, Steve.

Absolutely, cnmne. I've always been disgusted by these clowns who argue that life begins at conception, but apparently see nothing wrong with discarding the extra "babies" created by IVF.

Also, I think these people should be required to go on record about how a woman caught having an abortion should be punished in their ideal world. If abortion is murder, surely the woman should get life in prison or maybe even the death penalty, right? Let's see how that flies with the electorate.

It is Catholic doctrine that all IVF is immoral for this reason it is not allowed for good Catholics. Okay, that's my club's beliefs. I either follow it or quit the club. But it is no longer the 15th century where being a member of the club was mandatory or else (although I guess many Catholics, both lay and clerics, wish it still were). So I do have a problem with the Church trying to use the State to impose its particular opinion on all the non-members of the Club. http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19870222_respect-for-human-life_en.html

Tooweary: Ban IVF. It causes multiple humans to be discarded.

And then there are the criminal charges that will have to be brought against all those women whose uteruses are responsible for the 30-45% of all embryos that are naturally aborted by the mother's body. This carnage must stop!

The recent progress achieved with induced pluripotentiary stem cells and the marvelous results announced yesterday by Doug Melton and his team at Harvard would not have been possible absent what the scientific comminuity has learned by working with embryonic stem cells. I can tell you that in the patient advocate community the joy we take in these remarkable advances has been tempered by the realization of how much we have lost by the delay imposed upon this research over the last eight years.

Richard Arvedon

The tail ( the religious right) is wagging the dog (Repug Party)! I have to add, that this dog has a ton of fleas courtesy of Turdblossom and his coterie of sycophants!

They have enough money to go elsewhere to get the treatment which will be made available through stem cell research. So it's no skin off their nose if none of it is done here, be it privately or publicly financed.

"That sounds just like the book I once read (it was movie too but not that good) by Margaret Atwood, called The Handmaid's Tale. For anyone who wants to see a vision of when all women's rights are removed, do read this book. Guaranteed chills." - Posted by: MsMuddled

I've seen the movie (with Robert Duvall, supporter of our boy John "Zinger" McC*nt, as the theocratic security officer) and that's enough to chill you.