Next Steps for Progressive Stem Cell Politics
By Marcy Darnovsky,
Science Progress
| 12. 16. 2008
The long-awaited stem cell announcement expected soon after inauguration day will be a welcome corrective to the Bush administration’s restrictions. As we anticipate a new policy—one that loosens federal funding for research using stem cell lines created with in vitro fertilization embryos not needed for reproductive purposes—let’s also take a good look at how to change the politics of stem cell research.
For the past eight years, the stem cell debate has been notable for its divisiveness. Controversy formed along the embryo divide; many liberals and progressives came to their positions in reaction to the Bush stem cell policy and the theological beliefs that helped motivate it.
In several election cycles, embryonic stem cell research became both hot potato and partisan wedge. Opponents persisted in absolutist rejection, while supporters countered with promises of imminent cures for diseases that, in a frequent hyperbolic refrain, “affect 128 million Americans.” The din of the stem cell war all but drowned out discussion of the non-embryo issues that stem cell research can pose.
But we should be able to conduct stem cell politics—and science...
Related Articles
By Jacob M. Apel, The Baltimore Sun | 08.16.2024
By Neha Kondaveeti, The Austin Chronicle | 08.16.2024
It’s been a busy couple of months in biopolitics, with developments in the US, UK, China, Japan, and implicitly on Mars. Time for a brief roundup.
• • •
Bioethics needs an update
The National Research Act is now 50 years old. It was signed into law on July 12, 1974, as a direct response to publicity about the 1932 “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male.” The Hastings Bioethics Forum celebrated its anniversary with an...
Image courtesy National Human Genome Research Institute
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is supposed to encourage effective medical advances while also ensuring that patients and research subjects are protected. This dual mandate demands tricky judgment calls that are made more difficult by outside pressures of several kinds, political, judicial, and especially commercial. This April story at Bloomberg examines one deeply troubling pattern of regulatory capture:
Americans Are Paying Billions to Take Drugs That Don’t Work
Companies are increasingly...