Yesterday’s announced breakthrough on stem-cell research is obviously good news for medicine, public health, and scientific advancements. The Bush White House, which has stood in the laboratory door for seven years, suddenly feels justified.
[N]ow that scientists in Japan and Wisconsin have apparently achieved what Mr. Bush envisioned, the White House is saying, “I told you so.”
Indeed, presidential aides were so proud of themselves yesterday, they insisted that Bush drove the breakthrough experiments by claiming some ambiguous moral standard. “This is very much in accord with the president’s vision from the get-go,” said Karl Zinsmeister, a Bush domestic policy adviser. “I don’t think there’s any doubt that the president’s drawing of lines on cloning and embryo use was a positive factor in making this come to fruition.”
Look, we should all be really pleased by yesterday’s news, and the scientific advancements offer hope for life-saving medical research. But for the White House to suggest that Bush deserves some kind of credit for the progress is nonsense. In fact, the opposite is true.
One of the researchers involved in yesterday’s reports said the Bush restrictions may have slowed discovery of the new method, since scientists first had to study embryonic cells to find out how to accomplish the same thing without embryos.
“My feeling is that the political controversy set the field back four or five years,” said James Thomson, who led a team at the University of Wisconsin and who discovered human embryonic stem cells in 1998.
No Trackbacks To “Before Bush pats himself on the back…“
Frist! and he is a scumbag
I nominate him for the Nobel Impeach award.
Taking credit for something they didn’t do or help? They would NEVER do that =P
More proof of the Lysenkoization of science in America…but this is nothing new. It’s been done with anything that challenged political orthodoxy regarding (presently, they weren’t always) illegal drugs such as cannabis (aka ‘marijuana’)
Did you know that the US government had found that the primary psychoactive substance in cannabis…kills brain cancer cells without harming the surrounding tissues? Did you know that this was discovered…in 1974? Most of you haven’t ever head of this before. Yet new discoveries are being made regarding the anti-cancer properties of cannabis…but these discoveries are taking place in foreign countries because the US government, thanks to its’ anti-drug policies, won’t allow such research here, because it threatens that same anti-drug orthodoxy. Doesn’t this sound familiar?
The culture warriors are standing in the way of treatments that could benefit all of us thanks to their monomania and bigotry. All the while claiming it’s for our benefit.
George Bush had already solved all of the scientific problems in his own private, super-secret laboratory. He was just waiting for the other scientists to figure it out for themselves.
He’s that smart.
Not to mention that the use of virus to inject the DNA strand is akin to using a shotgun.
This has caused documented cases of cancers as a direct result in the test animals.
This needs to be kept in perspective, they got a few cells “resembling” stem cells and a whole lot of bad/rogue cells that turned cancerous.
And they still don’t know what exactly it is that they did.
All fact that will be ignored by the religious ignorant.
I love how repubs are concerned about Mitt, being a mormon, he might take his orders from Utah, or Giuliani, being a catholic, might take his orders from Rome, yet seem blind to the fact that for the last 20 years the republican party have been taking a lot of their marching orders from religious figures anyway!
I can’t WAIT for white christians to become a serious minority so they can feel what it’s like to have another dominant race and religion call the shots. (I’m hoping its Jamaicans)
nemo @ 4:
If this doesn’t work as expected, it will be Clinton’s fault. If it does work as expected bush will claim the victory. That’s business as usual.
This needs to be kept in perspective, they got a few cells “resembling” stem cells and a whole lot of bad/rogue cells that turned cancerous.
And they still don’t know what exactly it is that they did.
Exactly. And Chris Mooney (I keep bringing him up) is almost an expert on this topic. In his book, The Republican War On Science, he discusses the possibility of making non-embryo cells act like stem cells, but the consensus of scientists is that nothing beats real embryonic stem cells. They are real stem cells that can grow into just about anything we want. That’s why the discussion of how many “lines” were in-use by scientists was so important (there aren’t enough), and why Bush’s exaggeration of how many lines there are is important.
This does not close the book on anything. Embryonic stem cells are still what scientists need to conduct empirical research.
But the fact that Bush’s fight against federally-funded research delayed this possible advancement is well noted.
C’mon, folks, c’mon, quit piling on. Let’s give credit where credit is due.
This is the first time Bush made one of his asinine, amoral, abominably ignorant ‘decisions’ and had nature’s Law of Unintended Consequences work in his favor, where it turned out to not be an unmitigated disaster.
(Except for the few hundred folks who died in the past few years, and another few thousand who will die in the next few years, because The Dummy took the advice of his delusional ‘god’, and stood in the way of sound medical and scientific progress)
Compared to the massive pile of hundreds of thousands of corpses Bush has amassed to his credit, this can be considered a minor fu*k-up, so on that basis, give him credit. Use this as a mitigating factor during his IMPEACHMENT trial.
Saved a few stem cells, killed thousands of Iraqis and US personnel. Fair trade?
hey if they don’t have to use ESC..that’s great.As long as progress is being made I don’t care.It’s when progress is being stifled…I get pissed.
This is how he got by at Yale, was to take credit for others work. So what should we expect now?
This is exactly what I said the other day: the overly and overtly religious don’t want to pay the cost that science requires. They want the benefits for free.
I’d bet my eyes that if a cure for HIV/AIDS were found, the christofascists would say it was a “god from god”, ignoring the fact that they were the ones who called AIDS “god’s punishment for sodomites”.
Dhalgren @ 10:
thank you…are you positive on this.
This spin will play well on Fox, I think. The story has an unmistakable Rovian quality to it, doesn’t it?
the white house won’t tell you about the increase risk of the cells becoming cancerous that are created this way…..
1) No research is done in a vacuum. This current research was likely in the funding proposal stage before Bush made his infamous “compromise’ and certainly has a pre-Bush lineage.
2) This alone does not negate the need for embrionic stem cell research.
3) You just can’t trust the reporting/spinning of science in the main stream press. It’ will take a while to figure out the viability and significance of the newly reported findings. Note the tentativeness….
Two teams of scientists reported yesterday that they had turned human skin cells into what appear to be embryonic stem cells…
Just wait until the new government in Iraq develops nukes, that’ll show us how right Bush was about Iraq as well.
Sha_Rules @ 2:
Seconded.
so what shrubs done has created another shit storm under false pretenses…..he(they) lied again.
once again we in the white house and the current administration seek to put forth and encourage OUR policy of ALL THE SIZZLE WITHOUT THE STEAK said Karl Zinsmeister, a Bush domestic policy adviser.
ok he did not actually say that but he should have considering bush’s record of making a statement and gaining msm praise for nothing more than that. here we have someone in the administration basically telling us that his boss deserves credit for doing next to nothing.
Sort of like my dad touting the benefits of dishwashing machines because he didn’t want to help mom scrub the pots.
I’ll wait and read the actual report in a respectable scientific journal, not from CNN or Fox.
As for Bush… pat himself in the back? Why doesn’t he shoots himself in the face? Oh I’m sorry that would be advocating violence, but if he’s drunk enough…
Bush is a hero for setting the field back by 4 or 5 years?
Mmmmm, and as usual - something Bush thinks is good gets overshadowed by something BAD - yup, that pesky Scott McClellan thing.
Good luck spinning this one, Dana!!!
“Dana, have you been asked to flat out lie or merely mislead? Or have you been lied to or merely misled?”
Joementum @ 24:
No, more like your dad touting the benefits of having your mom scrub the pots all by herself because he didn’t want to buy a dishwasher in the first place.
Let’s put this in the proper historical context and perspective to fully understand the weight of the matter…
This is like giving the inventor of the straight jacket credit for all of Houdini’s escapes.
Got it?
7 years behind the 8 ball to appease some Scofield Bible cultists
Today’s democratic party is pathetic… you make me sick the whole lot of you.
[Deleted. Then you need to quit reading and posting on this blog. I know it’s a simple solution, but try it-Sitemonitor]
mudshark @ 16:
It’s what one of the researchers said himself this morning on the tele.
So I am as positive as he is.
BERT CONVY @ 32:
Thanks for your concern, leave a donation at the exit please.
In the end, science always provides solutions even for religions trying to block science. Advancement can’t be stopped no matter how hard the religions try to stop it.
It’s all moot. The rest of the world will go along in scientific advancement even if US religions don’t want it here. Religion will always loose in the end.
I ask in all sincerity, would they lie about what they have “discovered” or would they taint the findings in their favor and omit that which is not favorable. allow the record to speak for itself and take care in the bs they shovel.
BERT CONVY @ 32:
As long as you are sick, that is all i care about.
BERT CONVY @ 32:
talk about a moon-bat… Koo Koo !
xoites defends Constitution @ 37:
Nicely done!
[Deleted. Then you need to quit reading and posting on this blog. I know it’s a simple solution, but try it-Sitemonitor]
BERT CONVY @ 40:
Give me your location and i will run right over and see what i can do to help.
This whole idea that “stem cells” were never necesary is bunk. The new method is still inferior. It involves using viruses to get them to take. Something that is less than ideal. Bush deserves no good credit for this, especially since this has been one of the dumbest issues I remember in government. This “breakthrough” was nothing more than scientists who discovered how to do a proper hack because a blowhard was blocking them for cheap political points.
Ooooo! You are attacking Hillary Clinton! Oh! You got me!
ROTFLMAO!!!!!
How thick are these people? Do they get that the research they’ve ‘banned’ is going on all over the world? Oh sorry, I forgot. The white house globe is flat and only has one ‘america’ sized land mass
BERT CONVY @ 40:
Project much?
Just think, Bush finally has taken credit for putting science back 6+ years. At least he’s honest ;) The whole problem is all the lives that could have been saved. Instead they just tossed those embryo’s into an incinerator.
Good Job Bush, you not only didn’t save any Embryo’s, you also helped kill other people. Your life must be great now.
Moonbatshit crazy?
I think he just had his “I helped invent the internet” moment.
Hey Bert,
Didn’t anybody tell you you died in 1991?