Stem Cell research

A lot is being said about stem cell research, I mean the politics therein, these days. It doesn't get polarized the same way as other issues like the war or social security, or gay marriage. But this issue also plays games with the morals that social conservatives and Christians hold to.
I think that there are some misconceptions about this issue coming from both sides.
From the liberal side of things, I think the misconception is that conservatives oppose stem cell research as if all tissue related cloning, especially that done with embryos, is of the devil and inherently evil.
I think that's a poor absolutist position, and does not reflect the diversity within the conservative movement or the Republican party. There is a fear, of course, that cloning and research using human embryos will be abused. The main fear there is that conservative believe that aborted fetuses have been used for this research, and that ties it into the same hotbed of emotional lava bed that the abortion debate usually stirs up. Note that President Bush has not made any move to outlaw stem cell research, but is only cutting funding for it. He seems pleased as punch to allow anyone to privately fund that type of research if they so please, but isn't comfortable with publicly promoting it yet.
So in the effort to battle for federal funding, the left paints conservatives as genetic ludites, and their opposition to funding as some unreasonable, religious witch hunt.
As for the conservatives, I think that their opposition to this great genetic hope for medicine could be tempered with a dose of more information. Cloning and using embryos in research and practice sounds a bit frightening and does indeed have the potential for abuse. I think you are going to find that there are indeed ethical questions that need to be answered before we charge ahead into this brave new world. Do you draw the line at creating simple tissues? Whole organs? Entire cloned bodies for spare parts? What tissues do you use to catalyze the process? Unfertilized ovum? Fertilized ovum? Aborted fetuses? Adult donors?
I think it would be prudent to make as public as possible breakthrough research that is already being done on non-fertilized eggs donated to private and international centers. This comes from a Christian friend of mine:

This is the first I’ve heard of active cell lines being made from unfertilized eggs. Since I didn’t know this was possible, until reading this article, it’s a whole new line of thought for me. I stand with you as completely opposed to any use of a viable fetus, however this does seem potentially different. If an egg can be unfertilized and still implanted with genetic information that would turn it into a new pancreas for a diabetic, it does seem to hold potential for medical advancement without crossing into a morally unacceptable zone. My concerns stem to a certain degree from what line the research will take. How do they get from this first step to, say, growing a liver in a jar? Are they going to have to create real embryos and kill them in order to further their research? What are the possible abuses, and is there a way, if any, to keep someone whose whole body is in degenerative decay from growing a whole person from whom to harvest parts – in the name of efficiency?

See, information needs to be made readily available. We certainly can hold off on federal dollars for research until all these questions can be answered. Private and international research moves forward anyway. Some people think that unless the federal government funds it, it isn't going to happen. Nonsense. It may just happen slower.
In fact, I'm getting tired of those who are just bad-mouthing Bush on this issue and not paying any attention to the ethics side of the issue. And yes, that includes normally sane, moderate voices like Glenn Reynolds. (Note: I'm updating this, as I should probably note that Glenn didn't agree with Chris Nolan that Bush was being un-American. Sorry for the inference, Glenn).
But Glenn linked to this post by Chris Nolan, and I just had to sigh and shake my head.

President George W. Bush proved himself to be demonstrably un-American. It's a long-standing American tradition to take ideas – say the to use of electronic impulses to send the human voice to a distant location (telephone, radio) or the creation of numeric protocols that allow easy transportation of digital data across a network of phone lines (the Internet) – and commercialize them.

OK, stop. This is a partial quote from the first part of the post. But my question here is, why does not wanting the government to fund research in something qualify as anti-commercialization of that industry? Did the feds fund A. Graham Bell? Is Bush trying to stunt American industry in the medical field by outlawing production of tissues by means of stem cells? No.

Now, I have a great deal of respect for people who argue that destroying the day- or hours-old embryos is, in essence, the destruction of human life. But I also believe they are wrong. Life begins gradually; it's a subtle process that none of us should take for granted, one to which we should give careful thought. That's why we have ethics. But listening to the flat, "it's murder" argument is a bit like listening to folks who used to argue that astronaut deaths that occurred during the space program were God's way of telling us not to leave the earth.

OK, big difference between the taking of life at it's foundation and astronauts committing their own lives for the benefit of science and discovery. And does Nolan think that we shouldn't have a discussion on ethics BEFORE we strike out into this unknown area of science?
But Nolan then softens a bit, and says that indeed there are moral question and limits that need to be placed. There are lines that shouldn't be crossed. He notes that the American Academy for the advancement of Science has crafted guidelines, but then says that there is nothing in place to enforce those guidelines.
To a certain extent I agree with that. There should be some sort of enforcement of guidelines, if everyone agrees to the guidelines. But...

...the government can't cut funding it doesn't grant in the first place. It has little reach into places where it's already decided not to go; which means it has only limited knowledge of what's going on. In choosing a supposedly ethical position – that stem cell manipulation and research is morally wrong and should be banned – the U.S. government has chosen to abandon any sort of regulatory role in might play in seeing that such research is conducted with the ethical objections and concerns of critics in mind. President Bush's blanket-veto threat gives stem cell research no place in the law and any law that might be passed – say a total ban on cloning of human embryos – will only encourage work that's taking place in other countries to proceed at a faster pace.

Really? The government can't regulate what it doesn't fund? That's not the US federal government I've come to know and love. Note once again the mantra that Bush is trying to outlaw all stem cell research, which is not what's happening. The bill is only authorizing federal funding for research. Why is this seen as the battle for the legal practice of researching stem cell regeneration?
Why is the cloning of human embryos seen as the only way that stem cells can be regenerated?
His final paragraph brings up some common scare tactics in modern political battles. Jobs will be lost! Research and science is leaving the US!
Frankly, I'd like some rational debate about ethics before my tax dollars are used in this manner. Does that make me un-American?
It might make Bush appear anti-science at the moment. But certainly not anti-American.

Update: Foreign Policy magazine has an article that further shoots down Nolan's argument that Bush's policy will cause the rest of the world to leave the United States behind. Though it's not because we're trying real hard.

Now it appears that, even hobbled by federal funding restrictions, the United States is still leading the world in the stem cell research race. America’s Christian right garners a tremendous amount of attention at home for its opposition to stem cell research, yet major portions of Europe have adopted policies far more restrictive than those in the United States. And, despite some impressive breakthroughs in Asia, limited access to private funds and global research networks keeps that region from sprinting ahead of the field. The United States may be the leader in this biomedical research race, but for that it has the rest of the world to thank.

Stem Cell advocates often cite researchers bugging out for places like England, but don't inform us that England is one of the only countries that encourages that type of research. And even then only one notable US researcher left for England.

Yet, it has been reported that since Pedersen’s 2001 departure, no leading U.S. stem cell scientist has moved to Britain. This is partly because Britain’s public-sector model for promoting stem cell research has its own drawbacks, including uncertain public licensing, slow-moving funding cycles, and bureaucratic delays. When the Medical Research Council and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council attempted to jointly fund state-of-the-art facilities for a British stem cell bank, red tape held up the first deposits for six months. Equally important, there is nothing in Britain or continental Europe to rival the U.S. system for mobilizing resources through partnerships between private universities, companies, venture capitalists, and philanthropic foundations.

Which is why Bush's hold on federal funds isn't the death knoll for stem cell research, and the reason that the US will continue to be near the front of the pack anyway.
And although east Asia is probably in a better position to research stem cells unfettered, they have their problems too.

Stem cell researchers in Asia remain disadvantaged, however, by their limited connections to global research networks. The International Society for Stem Cell Research has 654 members in the United States and 56 in Britain, but only 34 in South Korea, 29 in Japan, 16 in Singapore, and 5 in China. Private investment has also lagged. Singapore’s Biopolis notwithstanding, the city-state currently has only one company researching embryonic stem cells, and none engaged in therapeutic cloning. In China, private investors remain nervous about weak protections for intellectual property, insufficient exit options for venture capital, second-rate managerial skills, and a muddled regulatory environment.

The author muses that considering how little regulations they have currently, the potential for backlash could cause restrictions just like in some European countries.

In the 2004 U.S. presidential campaign, Democratic challenger John Kerry warned repeatedly that the future of American stem cell research would be at risk if the restrictive policies of the Bush administration were not changed. This view underestimated the capacity of U.S. scientists to work around a simple federal funding ban.

So true. Although Paarlburg also notes that since the US is not funding this itself, but also not regulating in any way, the US has the potential of being the most liberal place to do this sort of research. State and private money will make up for the lack of federal funding.
The only real warning by the author is that Britain might get left behind in this arena, but their regulatory environment might be the best way to run it.