Biosciences Scare Tea-Republican Party Shills like Tommy Thompson and Walker

Schematic drawing of an influenza A virus

The Republican Party and its subset, the Tea Party, have become so anti-rational that practically any phenomena—macroeconomics, climate science, epidemiology, public health, evolutionary science, one can go on—that are outside its tiny ideological sphere are off limits.

Ed Fallone asks today, Why Isn’t Scott Walker Touting the Biosciences in Wisconsin?, pointing to the promise of stem cells for example, and the biosciences industry generally, studiously ignored by Scott Walker and actively opposed by Tommy Thompson who thinks he ought to dictate the direction of stem-cell research to pioneering scientists like Alan I. Leshner and James A. Thomson.

Thanks to the work of an extraordinary group of scientists working in the great public research institution, the University of Wisconsin-Madison (in the tradition of the Wisconsin Idea), Wisconsin enjoys a model health surveillance program that alerts medical professionals to emerging disease threats.

Walker and Thompson are not cheerleaders for this achievement either.

Science and public health are anathema to Scott Walker and Tommy Thompson, though Wisconsin can boast that we literally lead the world in research and public health systems because of our public commitment to a rational-scientific worldview.

Wisconsin leads the world in the identification of birds carrying the avian flu and often it seems like there are more illnesses in Wisconsin than elsewhere -- but that is because of the excellence of our health surveillance program.

When H1N1 was first discovered it was tracked extensively by Wisconsin scientists, and now that there has been an outbreak of H3N2, a flu strain to which humans are also susceptible, Wisconsin is ground zero for information on this mutation.

As Wisconsin scientists trace and gather information on diseases, the world benefits from the knowledge gained and the vaccines developed. 

In a very real sense, we can say that the Republican defunding of research such as in stem cells, and ideological distaste are making the world physically sicker, as pathologies go untreated. [Recall the Republican debates in which the prospect of a person (without health insurance) dying was actually applauded by the Republican debate audience.]

Consider the State Lab Mission Statement of the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene (WSLH): "[S]hall develop and provide essential public health laboratory support to communities, agencies and private health providers consistent with the public health goals of the State."

Now, consider Tommy Thompson, Ron Johnson, Scott Walker and the GOP-Tea Party.

These two systems of political forces—one collaborative and scientific; the other ideological, feeding ignorance—do not enjoy a symbiotic relationship.

What drives the Tea Party's worldview onto its radical politics is fear:

Fear of being alive, fear of the other

versus

The joy of discovery and the sharing of our Earth

One hopes this dichotomy—Wisconsin is perfectly situated to use stem cells specifically—becomes a defining political issue.

Stem Cell Ruling Will Not Hold Politically; Times Blows Reporting

Update: Stem Cell Ruling Will Be Appealed

via mal contends

There is cause for optimism in the news of the temporary injunction on President Obama’s expanded embryonic stem cell research policy as legal and political remedies appear attainable.

But first:

NYT Goofs

Chief Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the D.C. Federal District Court ruling is being ridiculed in the New York Times, but the Times misreports the language of the ruling.

The Times blew this one.

Lamberth "wrote that his temporary injunction returned federal policy to the 'status quo,' but few officials, scientists or lawyers in the case were sure Monday night what that meant," reads this morning's NYT.

How does a policy [or anything] "return" to the status quo?

But Lamberth is not guilty of this non sequitur in his administrative law ruling.

Actually, what Lamberth writes is: "The injunction, however, would not seriously harm ESC [human embroyic stem cells] researchers because the injunction would simply preserve the status quo and would not interfere with their ability to obtain private funding for their research."

Ideological Administrative Law Ruling Meets Public Opinion

The case, (Sherley v. Sebelius [No. 1:09-cv-1575 (RCL]), and the ruling granting an injunction will likely play into the November elections as an issue demonstrating that stell cell research enjoys wide popular support.

Elsewhere, Talking Points Memo offers the following analysis of Lamberth's ideological and subjective ruling that is long on assertion and short on reasoning and argumentation:

First, from a legal standpoint, Lamberth's ruling is quite vulnerable; it's not on solid ground at all. Congress has prohibited the expenditure of federal money on "research in which a human embryo [is] destroyed." Lamberth says that covers all embryonic stem cell research -- even the research of person B where person A created a cell line (and destroyed an embryo) in 1990 using private money, and person B in 2010 is seeking federal funds to study cells deriving from those A created -- because *any* work on that cell line should be deemed part of a single indivisible stream of "research in which a human embryo [is] destroyed."

But in order for plaintiffs to win here, it's not enough that Lamberth reads the statute that way. Because of the *Chevron* rule of deference to agency statutory interpretation, Lamberth has to find that this is the *only* possible (and reasonable) interpretation of the statutory language -- and so he does, finding that the statute unambiguously means what he says and nothing else. But -- to me -- that's really unconvincing. It seems to be that yeah, one reasonable person could read the statute as Lamberth does -- but a different reasonable person could have no trouble concluding that person B, in my hypo above, is *not* conducting "research in which a human embryo [is] destroyed." And in that situation, under *Chevron*, the government has to win. So I'd say that Lamberth's ruling is vulnerable to reversal.

One more point worth noting is that the political dynamics here of seeking a legislative fix are different than usual because Dickey-Wicker, as a budget rider, has to be re-enacted every year -- it's not a piece of embedded legislation that Congress would have to enact new legislation to repeal.

Stem Cell Breakthrough in Parkinson's Cure

From the London Independent comes word of a breakthrough in treating Parkinson's disease. The Catholic Church, predictably, does not like such fare.

Reports Steve Connor:

A potential cure for Parkinson's disease has come a significant step closer today with a study showing that it is possible to treat the degenerative brain disorder with cells derived from cloned embryos – a development condemned by the Roman Catholic Church.