Closing The Door To Discovery

Maybe I should have paid more attention to the Philadelphia Inquirer this week after all, in light of this letter that appeared in the paper today.

Charles Krauthammer credits President Bush with taking the moral high road by not permitting human embryos for scientific research. I would like to know how much credit Bush deserves on the morality meter for sending latter-day human embryos, a.k.a. adult human beings, to an ill-conceived war, with insufficient equipment, poor planning, and no exit strategy. I would like to know the morality of that. This man is bringing us closer to Armageddon.

I would like to hear Krauthammer defend a man who displays indifference for the lives of our men and women serving in Iraq, yet profoundly defends embryonic stem cells. Perhaps it's nothing more complicated than a new stem cell today, a future soldier for a pointless war tomorrow. Why doesn't Bush care about the lives he can save by withdrawing our troops gradually?

Linda Gordon
Yardley

I applaud Ms. Gordon’s comments on the Iraq war, and it made me a bit curious to go back and read what Krauthammer said (here).

I should add that there actually was a time when I bothered to read Krauthammer on a regular basis. Though he is a dyed-in-the-wool freeper (make no mistake), he actually possesses something of an intellect, though he threw it completely out the window for Dubya’s Excellent Iraq Misadventure as far as I’m concerned.

I wanted to take issue with a couple of points in Krauthammer’s article (aside from his typical freeper demonizing that stem cell research will automatically lead to human cloning).

First, he hails the discovery of embryonic stem cells in amniotic fluid as a breakthrough discovery of some type, since harvesting these cells would not harm the embryo. However, this BBC article notes the following:

UK experts had doubts about the feasibility of the technique.

They said gathering amniotic fluid from large numbers of women might be difficult.

...

Professor Colin McGuckin, from Newcastle University, is researching the use of similar cells taken from the umbilical cord at birth.

He welcomed the report, saying that it was 'thorough' and demonstrated the potential of amniotic stem cells.

"The best thing is to have a variety of stem cell sources to provide the best stem cell for patients. Unless researchers do work to demonstrate there are alternatives to embryonic stem cells, the wider public won't understand that.

"It shouldn't be seen as a race between embryonic stem cells and other sources."
However, he said that harvesting amniotic fluid presented particular difficulties in many cases.

"If it is a natural birth, the waters break and they are all over the floor, and you've lost them. In this country, the majority of women give birth naturally, which means that fluid could not be collected.

"You could conceivably gather amniotic fluid during a caesarean section, but that process could interfere with the experience of giving birth."

Nothing like some actual science to deflate Krauthammer’s bubble a bit.

And of course, Krauthammer takes this opportunity to try and puff up Dubya as some sort of visionary leader with this nonsense (please)…

Congress will soon vote to erase Bush’s line (on embryonic stem cell research). But future generations may nonetheless thank Bush for standing athwart history, if only for a few years.

That’s assuming “future generations” aren’t killed in Iraq first.

And second, with typical deception, Krauthammer offers this skewed portrayal of countries embarking on embryonic stem cell research.

South Korea enthusiastically embraced unrestricted stem cell research. The subsequent greatly heralded breakthroughs — accompanied by lamentations that America was falling behind — were eventually exposed as a swamp of deception, fraud and coercion.

Maybe South Korea ran into problems, but as noted here, the U.K. and the European Union don’t seem to be having any problems with their research.

And this post by the blogger Hilzoy provides a lot of useful background information on this issue.

Of course, in what purports to be a column about science, Krauthammer starts off by taking a shot at John Kerry in the 2004 election, which tells you all you need to know about his priorities.