| Wednesday,
November 10, 2004 Subject: For once, I
agree with Kristof.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/10/opinion/10kris.html?ex=1257829200&en=ba924ef558c16df3&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt
-- Roland Dobbins
Indeed. There are sometimes reasons for exceptions
to the journalist shield laws, particularly in the case of fraudulent
information, but not many. The whole issue needs discussion.
Subject: You look GREAT in Firefox
I haven't done a complete scan of all my sites yet,
bur yours looks awesome (better than in IE)!
-- Dave
Good! Thanks.
============
Whether or not one believes in stem
cell research in the US it will happen somewhere in the world. It has far
too much potential to cure disease to allow it to languish.
I think this an important article from the current New
England Journal of Medicine on Proposition 71 in California. I'm in strong
support of continued stem cell research at the federal level, and the
article gives a very brief primer on stem cell research and outlines why it
is necessary. Well worth reading. I'm sorry for the length of the URL.
Perhaps one of your readers can instruct me how to make it shorter? Tinyurl??
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/351/17/1711?
hits=20&where=fulltext&andorexactfulltext=and&searchterm
=proposition+71&sortspec=Score%2Bdesc%2BPUBDATE_SORTDATE%
2Bdesc&excludeflag=TWEEK_element&searchid=
1100112206704_10210&FIRSTINDEX=0&journalcode=nejm
Mark Huth
Well, it wasn't hard to convert: paste special
does that so long as you double space between paragraphs.
I will read the article with interest; but I think
there is misunderstanding of the nature of this controversy. The question
has never been whether or not to conduct stem cell research, or even to fund
it. There is funding, perhaps not enough, perhaps enough; I am not privy to
the allocation decisions although in my opinion AIDS research is overfunded
and that overfunding is having an impact all the way down the line in
education and specialization decisions as well as absorbing money better
spent elsewhere. But the federal government does fund stem cell research.
It does not fund stem cell research in cases where
the cells were taken from an embryo (fetus, blastopod) created for the
purpose of generating those cells. There are exceptions to that for the
lines that already exist: this is analogous to using the data from research
that is forbidden because inhumane on the theory that the lives taken should
not have been in vain.
There is also funding for adult stem cell research.
It is my understanding that adult stem cell research has resulted in just
about all the things we have learned on the subject, while fetal stem cell
research hasn't been so productive -- one reason why private research
investment goes to adult stem cell research and not fetal -- and that funds
that go to fetal stem cell research will come out of the budget for adult
stem cell research.
I have no expertise in allocation of research funds
in these areas, and my opinion on whether fetal stem cell research into cell
lines other than those already in existence would be greatly productive, but
I do know that the question is never debated on those terms, and that always
bothers me: when one side asks for a great deal of money that will come from
the budget of the other side, the arguments ought to be made in scientific
terms and reasons for expecting the alternate research to have a higher
payoff, and I don't hear that in this discussion at all. One the one side we
have the issue of whether or not it is ethical to create embryos in order to
kill them and harvest their stem cells: this gets us into all kinds of
issues, like "quickening" and such, and ultimately into the abortion issue,
none of which has much scientific content. On the other we have not heard
what the payoff is.
Let me pose you a question: let us suppose that
there is a chance that dismembering anesthetized babies born alive with
Down's Syndrome (i.e. those formerly known as "mongoloid") would lead to
really important medical results including cures for many kinds of heart
ailments. What should we do? But of course, if it's all speculation on what
this would lead to, we aren't even tempted; it's only when we see what the
payoff might be that we might be tempted to get out the carving knife.
Of course the argument can be made that until we do
the fetal stem cell research we can't know what the payoff will be, but I
suppose I might make the same case for dismembering mongoloids.
I'll go read your article. It may change my mind.
I have now read it. It doesn't say anything new,
and gives me no new data for a decision. It marshals the arguments for tax
support of this kind of research, but has only speculation and arm waving
about results.
Example:
"Passage of the initiative [California Proposition 71, which did pass] is
important because opposition within the Bush administration remains
stalwart. Faced with appeals to relax the restrictions on stem-cell research
signed by 264 members of the House and Senate, ranging from Senator Hillary
Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to Senators
Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Trent Lott (R-Miss.), a Bush spokesperson asserted
that the president "continues to believe strongly that we should not cross a
fundamental moral line" by condoning new derivations of stem-cell lines.
Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson argued that before the
current policy is relaxed to permit broader use of stem cells, "we must
first exhaust the potential" of the lines approved in 2001. In view of the
new lines that have already been derived and that are now available for
research funded by nonfederal sources, as well as the findings that are sure
to emerge from such research, Thompson's stance will increasingly be
analogous to requiring the exhaustive use of slide rules for all
computations before allowing computers to be powered up. "
What does that mean? Findings from new lines are
"sure to emerge" but we can pooh pooh the findings that may come from what
is already being funded? Do I detect here the moans of someone whose project
wasn't funded? Or what am I reading?
It may be that massive funding of research on new
fetal stem cell lines will do wonderful things. If so, I make no doubt that
the University of California will have people competent to do that, and if
$3 billion in California new debt is not enough, just how much money will
be?
I confess that I am puzzled by your position on stem
cell research. I don't know much about it, but is it really a question of
harvesting fetuses for that particular purpose? Surely there is an abundance
of aborted fetuses which are otherwise simply disposed of. Unless Roe v.
Wade is overturned, that state of affairs is certain to persist.
Whether or not one supports abortion on demand,
doesn't it make sense to make use of the aborted fetuses rather than simply
discarding them? It's not as if a shortage of such fetuses would encourage
more abortions simply for the purpose of harvesting stem cells. Or, if it
is, I don't understand how.
As to the Mongoloid issue you raised as a straw man,
it occurs to me that we as a society willingly sacrifice people every day
toward the greater good. The armed forces are the obvious example, but it
goes far beyond that. Every time a bridge or a skyscraper is built, there
are two budgets, a money budget and a death budget. We know going in that
building that new bridge is going to cost X number of lives, and yet we
build the bridge. How can we not?
Perhaps you believe that designating a particular
person to be killed is unethical, while at the same time believing that it
is ethical to engage in activities where luck of the draw determines who
specifically dies. Or perhaps it's because infantryman and bridge builders
voluntarily assume the risk while fetuses and infants do not. I'm not saying
you're wrong, but only that I've not spent any time thinking about the
question.
-- Robert Bruce Thompson
thompson@ttgnet.com http://www.ttgnet.com/thisweek.html
http://forums.ttgnet.com/ikonboard.cgi
It is my understanding that the federal prohibition
is against funding research on fetal stem cells collected from fetuses
created for that purpose. That is certainly what the President said. I don't
have the actual policy statement. I do not know what would happen to a grant
application in which the stem cells were to be collected from frozen embryos
already in existence but doomed because no longer wanted (fertility research
produces many of these). I do find it interesting that there is private
funding of research on adult stem cells, apparently because the people who
expect to make money from it find that more promising; why I do not know,
but then I haven't invested in either, and I am not part of an investment
research teams.
As to the difference between sending an
infantryman, even a conscript, into battle and deliberately dissecting him
for the higher good, I would hope you wouldn't have much problem seeing
these are not quite the same thing. Now one might say that a young
infantryman is worth more than a mongoloid baby: but surely you can see
there may be some pretty hefty ethical reefs off in that direction?
In any event, isn't the question moot? If
California is to spend $3 billion of borrowed money, isn't that enough? At
least for a while? Why must every funding agency in the land conform? It
looks to me more like an abortion issue than anything else. Abortion
opponents don't want such things left to the states, because while most
states would do nothing if Roe v. Wade were overturned, some would regulate
abortion and a few would forbid it, and minding other people's business
seems to be the order of the day.
If someone can make a scientific case for spending
more than $3 billion on fetal stem cell research, I will listen; but so far
I have heard absolutely no scientific arguments to the effect that it's not
enough that California do it, the Federal Government must do so also,
presumably so that as large a group as possible of those who don't like the
idea can have it rammed down their throats. As Mr. Jefferson long ago noted,
to have one's money taken by force in taxes and used for purposes one
considers immoral is seldom a good thing for a nation to do. It may have to
be done, but surely one wants to minimize, not maximize, the instances?
Why in the world cannot more matters be left to the
states? Consent of the governed is a powerful idea.
=============
Dr Pournelle,
On the Treaty of Westphalia
You tell us
that ..."The United States has explicitly repudiated the notion of
sovereignty as regards nations that sponsor terrorism and harbor terrorist
enemies of the West."
Perhaps so, but it's worth noting that al-Qaida has
declared that "the international system built-up by the West since the
Treaty of Westphalia will collapse; and a new international system will rise
under the leadership of a mighty Islamic state."
http://www.themedialine.org/news/news_detail.asp?NewsID=5420
Such mutual rejection of Westphalia would certainly
seem to signal its end as a living doctrine.
Or perhaps not. The American repudiation of the
sovereignty of nations harbouring and sponsoring terrorists is not so new as
all that. On the one hand this is no more nor less than the US did with the
Barbary pirates some two centuries ago; on the other, it can be seen as
simply a modern interpretation of the more tradition declaration of
war--something that seems to have gone out of fashion since the end of the
Second World War.
What is new is the increasingly common belief in
certain quarters around the world that one nation can only conduct military
operations against another with the explicit authority of the United
Nations.
Jim Mangles
Yes, of course, and we have some examples in the
suppression of the slave trade. As you say, the UN seems to have assumed a
role never envisioned by Hugo Grotius. It makes for some tricky discussion
in graduate classes in International Law, and did so even as far back as
when I participated in Dr. Manders' seminars while in graduate school at the
University of Washington. Incidentally, I got an A for my paper although
Professor Manders did not agree with my views. But those were days when
liberals and conservatives could disagree in a gentler fashion.
It seems clear to me that something other than the
Westphalia system will evolve. It had, actually, by 1900, when Great Powers
had rights that others did not have, and that was incorporated into the UN
with the Permanent Members of the Security Council and their vetoes. All
sovereignties are equal, but some are more equal than others.
We can speculate on what the next steps will be;
and perhaps, as Dandridge Cole observed, we cannot predict the future, but
we can invent it. In any event it's a discussion worth having.
===========
This is typical of many letters:
Hi Jerry,
Just my 2 cents, but I like your site the way it is.
If changing it makes it easier for you, then great, but simpler is better as
far as I'm concerned.
If you like the fly-out menu approach, my wife runs
the Intel Technology Journal, (developer.intel.com/technology/itj) and she
can tell you what they do and what tools they use.
On your comment on today's view about Arabs thinking
we are weak. My parents spent 77 and 78 in Kuwait bringing American fast
food to the Middle East (talk about cultural weapons of mass destruction!)
and returned with much the same opinion. The Arabs think we are weak
because:
1. We did not conquer, kill, or enslave them - we paid
them for their oil
2. We made a lot of them very rich
3. They see America through the media
Like you, I suspect the Marines will re-educate a
small group of them shortly. Of course, no matter what happens, the media
will make it look like a failure.
Phil Tharp
Mountain View, CA
=====
Subject: More on Ramadan
Your correspondent's notes on Ramadan were
interesting, but somewhat brief. As someone who spent much of the last 25
years working in the Middle East, may I expand slightly? The most important
thing, as far as I am concerned, is the sheer hypocrisy of it all. Ramadan
is a month of fasting, right? Yet their own published figures show that they
eat and drink more during Ramadan than any other month of the year.... they
just do it during the night, rather than during the day. As noted,
basically, they just (well, those who can) change everything around, day is
used for sleeping and night for feasting, partying and carousing. Since the
day is used for sleeping, no work gets done during the day at all. Office
workers, taxi-drivers, students, fall asleep very very easily during the
day, so it's not a good time to attempt to travel (or to teach, or to get
anything official done). And then, come the end of Ramadan, all the gyms do
a roaring trade with people coming in to get rid of the extra pounds they've
put on during Ramadan (the month of fasting)!
Anthony
I expect such things vary from community to
community. After all, Mardi Gras is supposed to be preparation for Lent, but
in modern times, Lent is the excuse for big Mardi Gras carnivals...
=================
Subject: Credentialism in action
http://users.snip.net/~drsteve/Articles/Dr_Zoe.htm
The story of "Dr. Zoe D. Katze, Ph.D., C.Ht., DAPA".
In detail
John R. Strohm
It was bound to happen...
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