Krauthammer’s column today in the Washington Post argues that the expansion of stem cell research using new lines embryos to derive new lines of stem cells is bad. He’s just plain wrong on the facts, so the column is pretty useless, which is no surprise given the tactics used these days by those who oppose embryonic stem cell research: confuse and redirect.
But what is clear here is that there is a political strategy in play – while the money for expanded stem cell research that is implicit in any Senate or House proposal thus far is small, the effect on state-based stem cell research under Castle-DeGette would be huge. In effect the Frist effort could clamp down on new state-based initiatives, restricting the amount and kind of research that states (read: California) could do with their own money. Hmm.
And Eric Meslin writes today on MCW:
Amazing how the dominoes start to fall, isn’t it? Yesterday George Will made a similar argument, without the call for criminalization.
Incidentally, we’re still having to deal with this issue at the state level — here in Indiana Mitch Daniels recently signed into law a bill that we (i.e., our medical school) had a hand in shaping, that linked permissibility of research on stem cells to “applicable federal law” — a bit of a risky strategy I grant you, that in the worst case would at least set the floor of permissible stem cell research at Bush’s 2001 policy and, in the best case would become more permissive if something like Castle-DeGette was passed. (Of course the state would be free to amend the law the maintain the more conservative limit). In this red state that was seen as a major victory, given that the bill as introduced (S.268) would have banned everything — all cloning, all stem cell research. What remains in the Indiana law is a criminalization provision for violations. Does anyone know of research (legal or otherwise) that shows what the impact is of including criminal penalties in areas of regulated medical research?