The Kovacses want to give their embryos to science, but they cannot donate them in Michigan because a 1978 state law prohibits the destruction of embryos for research. Michigan voters on Nov. 4 will decide on a constitutional amendment that would allow researchers to create new stem cell lines using embryos that would otherwise be discarded.
The effort faces stiff opposition from Michigan Citizens Against Unrestricted Science & Experimentation, a coalition of interest groups that say Proposal 2's language is overly broad and that passage could lead to unregulated research and even human cloning.
Unregulated research. In America. Can you imagine that? What would Benjamin Franklin think?
3 comments:
Adam,
Obama seems to be the probable winner of the upcoming election. How much of an improvement do you think we will see on separation of church and state issues?
One wonders if America will escape the fate that befell Germany. I bought a copy of The Ominous Parallels. I'd like to thank you for recommending it. It's a very interesting take on Nazi Germany. I don't agree with all of it, but I definitely enjoy it. The author impressively makes connections between seemingly disparate phenomena -- education and art.
Nick,
Unfortunately, the growth of Fascism in America has reached the point, where even the mere prospect that something that makes some people happy, anything at all (it didn't have to be science) would be left "unregulated," is enough to strike fear into the heart of the typical American voter. The process is taking place almost exactly as Peikoff predicted in "The Ominous Parallels." The only thing that Peikoff missed - at OCON, he said that he will include it in an update when he gets to it - is that in America the faith-based foundations of Fascism are not being as disguised as they were in National Socialist Germany. They are openly displayed, so much so, that what we are already more than halfway to, is more properly characterized as "Christo-Fascism."
I also agree with Peikoff that voting for Democracts will not stop the long term trend, but may slow it down relative to the Christo-Fascism Express of the Theo-Republicans. In the short run, I expect that an Obama government will lift, or at least moderate, some of the Theo-Republicans' extreme "regulations" that are strangling scientific research in America. And I do not believe in historical determinism. There will probably be places where reason will survive, but no one can predict where.
And the trouble is, most people will not understand why this is such an appalling move. They won't see that an attack on freedom of scientific research is an attack on the beating heart of a free society. And the reason is that most of them don't regard science (or, more broadly, reason), as particularly crucial, or (worse) as particularly true, or (in the case of the 52% majority of barbarised Americans who accept hard creationism) as an essentially permissable activity. Even those who percieve the magnitude of the current political disaster are typically obscurantists themselves, who can do nothing except hopelessly throw themselves against the entrenched gang in power in favour of other gangs, some of them worse than the Bush clique.
I would like to ask: to what degree do you believe that scientists (and the larger professional class in a position to make public use of the human intellect) oppose the current trend, understands its severity, are able to correctly identify its essential nature, and have the means and integrity to fight for modernity against these monsters?
Thank you, once more, for keeping this blog. I immensely value the example of what the proper use of the human mind looks like.
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