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 Cells—Thompson, Neumann and Fitz Have to Answer in Radicalized GOP

James A. Thompson

Imagine if the lost decade of 2001-2009 saw a Manhattan Project-size effort funding stem cells—treating Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's, paralysis, Leukemia, blindness; imagination and political will are the only impediments to what stem cells may do in the future.

U.S. Senate candidate, Tommy Thompson, needs to answer to the Wisconsin people on stem cell research, namely Thompson's flip-flopping.

Pioneering scientists like University of Wisconsin-Madison professor, James Thompson, should be supported in the lab as though our families' health and lives depend on it; and not have to wage a political fight against the Republican Party that is steadfastly hostile to the promise of "human embryonic stem cell research, ... a [GOP] position running counter to both scientific and public opinion."

GOP candidates for Senate, Mark Neumann and Scott Fitzgerald, need to explain their extremism on this public-minded research as well.

• Tommy Thompson for Senate
• Mark Neumann for Senate

• Scott Fitzgerald for Senate

As Alan I. Leshner and Dr. Thomson write in their December 3, 2007 column defending embryonic stem cell research, "Standing in the Way of Stem Cell Research":

Efforts to harness the versatility of embryonic stem cells, and alleviate suffering among people with an array of debilitating disorders, began less than 10 years ago. Since then, scientists have continued to pursue embryonic stem cells because of their ability to transform into blood, bone, skin or any other type of cell. The eventual goal is to replace diseased or dysfunctional cells to help people with spinal cord injuries, neurodegenerative disorders, cancer, diabetes, heart disease and other conditions. ...

Federal funding is essential for both adult and embryonic stem cell research, even as promising alternatives are beginning to emerge.

Unfortunately, under the policy President Bush outlined on Aug. 9, 2001, at most 21 stem cell lines derived from embryos before that date are eligible for federal funding. American innovation in the field thus faces inherent limitations. Even more significant, the stigma resulting from the policy surely has discouraged some talented young Americans from pursuing stem cell research.

On this, Wisconsin should listen and be guided by Dr. Thompson, not Tommy Thompson and Republican extremists.

A look at this video [below] of Thompson appears to indicate that Thompson may have lost it.

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.

Stem Cell Advance Shows More Research Needed, Not Less

Update III: A Stem Cell Breakthrough — No Thanks to Mr. Bush

Update II: Leshner and Thomson: Bush Stands in the Way of Stem Cell Research

Update: Prominent Stem Cell Researcher Praised By Bush Rips White House’s Stem Cell Policies

Madison, Wisconsin - James A. Thomson, the UW-Madison scientist who led the team that announced in 1998 the generation of stem cells from human embryonic cells, is an admired figure across the world.

Stem cells can become any of the differentiated cells of the human body and hold the promise to developing treatments and possibly cures for such ailments as diabetes, muscular dystrophy, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease), and other degenerative conditions.

The possibilities are staggering, and stem cells are hope for the millions of people suffering from cruel and life-destroying illnesses.

Unfortunately, the same small band of rigid, anti-rational dogmatists (which includes President George W. Bush) who rave against federal funding for embryonic stem cell research in favor of Bush's stem cell policy, have now declared the issue moot after the announcement in November of Dr. Thomson’s and a Japanese team’s generation of stem cells from adult, non-embryonic cells.

Representative of this clique is Charles Krauthammer.

Krauthammer quotes Dr. Thomson: “If human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough.”

Krauthammer goes on to praise President Bush and his unyielding opposition to embryonic stem cell research.

The verdict is clear: Rarely has a president -- so vilified for a moral stance -- been so thoroughly vindicated. … Because the moral disquiet that James Thomson always felt -- and that George Bush forced the country to confront -- helped lead him and others to find some ethically neutral way to produce stem cells. Providence then saw to it that the technique be so elegant and beautiful that scientific reasons alone will now incline even the most willful researchers to leave the human embryo alone.

Ridiculous.

Judicious researchers like Dr. Thomson have thought through the moral implications of using days-old, tiny embryonic cells (destined to be destroyed at fertility clinics) to generate stem cells, and have arrived at the opposite conclusion from that which Krauthammer and the religious right disingenuously posit.

Stem cell research is in its infancy and though the research has been set back years by Bush’s stubborn policy, no stem cell researcher is calling for the abandonment of embryonic stem cell research.

The new stem cell techniques are brand-new, retain possible cancer-causing risks, and would be unsuitable at this point for any therapy, much less cures.

The arguments against embryonic stem cell research were irrational when Bush and the religious right made them in 2001, and they remain so today.

The small circle of anti-embryonic stem cell research fanatics should be seen as the cruel Luddites that they are.

No compromise need be made with this tiny minority of the American public.

The promise and hope of scientific inquiry generally and stem cell research specifically should be rekindled by the next American administration.

Embryonic stem cell research and new techniques ought to become the Manhattan Project for the next century.

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