*(AP – 09/07/2008) Researchers hope to one day extract stem cells from testicles that could be directed to grow into all kinds of tissues to repair everything from a damaged heart to brains destroyed by Alzheimer’s to insulin-producing cells to cure diabetes. *

Won’t the cells being used come from unfertilized eggs never used for in-vitro that would have been thrown away anyway? It is completely unethical to use embryonic cells for this purpose only, but if the cells are coming from eggs that would be thrown in the garbage then why not put them to use in research? It is a painfully slow process, but its that one rare breakthrough that is necessary in order to be able to cure terrible diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s or paralysis. Why would it be ethical to throw the unfertalized eggs away, but unethical to use these same eggs for research?

A magazine cover from a few years ago showed Barack Obama’s face in a sea of purple. The hope was that he would transcend party lines.

Not so.

His extremist positions put him at odds even with the liberal illuminati of his own party.

The stem cell issue, much like the abortion problem, are important not because they motivate a Falwell-esque base, but because they represent the frontier of human rights – something the Republican party has been passionate about since the days of slavery.

The new President-Elect and his leftist cronies will not unify the nation – take a look at county-by-county tallies – they are polarizing it.

The last thing the Republican party needs to do in the next four years is to play the moderate.

That’s what happens when you cut funding to a line of research. Blaming that lack of results on the ESCR itself is backwards.

Again this isn’t that complicated-
the vast majority of basic research is done on the government’s tab. Why? Because basic research yields no money. Applied research is where companies live, but applied research only exists once the basic research is done.

Basic research is almost entirely done in the national laboratories or university laboratories (mostly the latter). Until just last month I worked for Intel in one of he most advanced materials analysis labs in the world (no exaggeration). We spent more than a billion dollars every year on R&D. Not more than a tiny tiny handful of that could be considered basic research (a few very far reaching and speculative components research projects). What we did was build off of the basic research done at universities across the world. Almost every year the world’s fastest transistors were built in university labs (example) not ours. We took what they did and made it commercially viable.

If you turn off federal funds for basic research you essentially kill that line of development because nobody else can or will step up.

SO can we please drop this false argument that ESCs don’t live up to the potential of ASCs? The fact is that the science suggests they are more useful, and we will only know for sure if we get funding to pursue the research.

If you want to argue against ESCR on moral grounds, feel free. But arguing against it on utilitarian grounds is bull.

McCain would have done it too.

Of course Democrats have always been the party to favor more money for less work (and vice versa). Unfortunately, most Republicans have warmed to the idea too.

Everyone in the nation should consider it liberal to spend ANY money on even legitimate scientific research, let alone the illegitimate variety! However by that standard, all members of both parties in Congress (except Ron Paul) would be liberals.

Like the UK, it looks as though we are doomed to gratify the pleasures of mad scientists who belong as mental hospital patients.