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Friday, July 30, 2004
Quibble, over such a small thing
Michael Harris does an okay job laying out the stem cell research debate and the various contradictions therein, primarily in the US, in the Ottawa Sun today with his column: Cell Division.
However, I have one bone to pick. It's with this paragraph:
If, for example, stem cell research is wrong because it involves the destruction of human embryos, as Mr. Bush opines, then the president should be banning the practice, not merely hobbling public funding. That is especially true since privately funded stem cell research focuses on commercial rather than therapeutic applications of the nascent technology.
I'm not completely sure of this, but it seems to me these two types of research are one and the same, or pretty close: the commercial applications would probably be therapeutic. Why else would anyone else want to buy them? By making his distinction, Harris I believe is overloading his language based on the assumption that commercial applications are bad, but government-funded applications are always therapeutic and good.
Of course this is not the case, since governments in times past have funded some of the nastiest "research" ever devised by man. The law of unintended consequences aside, political and commercial interests are as benevolent--or as dangerous--as the people who run them.
Posted by Kevin Steel on July 30, 2004 | Permalink
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Comments
Maybe he means "commercial" as in "anti-aging ingredients for skin cream" or something that would somehow involve weight loss or other cosmetic application. You never know.
Posted by: Kathy Shaidle | 2004-07-30 11:48:06 AM
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