ideology and embryonic stem cell research

If you are not on the pro-life side of the debate, you might ask what is all this fuss about embryos. Leaving aside that moral question, you should note that many public figures support embryo research as a gesture against religion and irrationality and for progress and science. However, given the decline of our manufacturing base and of educational standards in schools, a situation in part created by a liberal thinking on economics and society, it should be clear that these people are more interested in ideology than supporting scientific endeavour. The call for state-funding for embryonic research is so high because they can't get private funding: the medical applications have not come through. This is about the corruption of science and scientific report by ideology.

Editor of National Scientist is propagandist for research using embryos

Another example of the obscuring of the distinction between adult and embryonic stem cells appeared in a page-long article in Thursday's Daily Telegraph (20 November, On the verge of a new era in medicine, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/3486000/Transplant-of-windpipe-grown-from-stem-cells-heralds-new-era-in-medicine.html) by Roger Highfield, describing the rebuilding of a human trachea as “human windpipe, constructed partly from stem cells”. He then comments: “At long last, the glint in the researcher's eye has been turned into a significant advance in the clinic. Forget all this fuss about embryos and angst about playing God: this is unadulterated good news.”

The language is indeterminate here: adult stem cells or embryonic stem cells, but the context implies they are all one and the same. Here at last, the casual reader will think, we have the evidence: embryonic stem cell research is justified, the religious luddites were wrong. This is an article by the editor of a prestigious Science magazine in a National newspaper, so it must be credible.

Not mentioned was the fact that this breakthrough is a medical application of adult stem cells.

In the detail of the article, to be fair, he says, as it were in passing, that this particular application comes from the patient's bone marrow, but you have to read closely to understand this. The suggestion has been made already that embryonic stem cells are to be given credit. For the most part, he refers to stem cells as if all types of stem cells are the same in medical terms. If we should forget the fuss about embryos, this is not for the reasons given by the editor of the New Scientist, but because it was by using adult stem cells that, as the article says, “scientists can now fashion organs using a patient's own cells, eliminating the problems with rejection that always plagued transplants”. A reasonable conclusion from the facts of the case would be that we should not rely on morally dubious research on difficult to obtain embryos and concentrate on ethical, successful research into adult stem cells; the article implies otherwise by obscuring the distinction between the two technologies. It is so obscure in fact that I don't discount the possibility that Roger Highfield is writing very poorly, failing to clarify the topic; however, by reading the entire article, I conclude that he is advocating (without justification from the facts) the benefits of embryonic stem cell research. Towards the end, after noting a number of applications for adult stem cell research (he doesn't make it explicit which type of stem cell, but you can be sure it is adult cells), the article changes direction, but seamlessly:

“And there is there is the astonishing potential [my italics] of embryonic stem cells, the means by which Mother Nature fashions our entire bodies. Our understanding of how to guide the development of stem cells is primitive [my italics] – but unlike the bone marrow cells used in the Castillo case, embryonic stem cells can [my italics] turn into any one of the 200 or more different cell types in our bodies, rendering the opportunities potentially [my italics] limitless.

Note the move from fact to aspiration. He continues:

“much work must be done to determine how to make then grow the right way, and then to mould them into organs ... the potential .. is vast ..” and “The path ahead is difficult: more funding and more testing .. false alleys and blind starts, but in the long term, a brave new world beckons”. So far the funding and testing has gone into false alleys and blind starts before ... I still wonder if he is being satirical here.

Note the words, “can turn into” “much work” “potential”, “potentially”, “path ahead is difficult”, a tacit admission by the editor of the New Scientist that embryonic stems cells are not producing medical applications. Yes, Dr Highfield, you need funding because the smart (according to empirical success) money has gone into adult stem cell research.

He concludes: “Medically and ethically, the bottom line is simple: if we follow the path blazed by Claudia Castillo and her doctors, no one need ever die waiting for a donated organ again.”

Roger, the path blazed used ethically created adult stem cells. Please make this clear instead of touting for embryonic research.

Reuters confused about difference between adult and embryonic stems cells

For another scientific advance for adult stem cells - see
http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN18296064. Yet the first paragraph of this Reuters article talks misleadingly about cells from "tiny embryos". The key word is "can"; embryonic stem cells have not worked yet and it seems to be an article of faith that they will. There is no evidence for their success, which good science is supposed to be all about. A closer read of the article shows that it the stem cells are from bone marrow, not embryos.

Under the authorship of Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor for Reuters, a supposedly factual article is suborned to the PR agenda of the embryo experimenters, who appeal to the pseudo-pro-science lobby entrenched within supposedly enlightened liberal opinion. Promotion of embryonic stem cell research is all about ideology, not science. Instead of looking at scientific evidence, they are influenced by the positivism that informs progressive movements through the 19th and 20th centuries. This conceives a false opposition between "science", "objectivity", "progress" on the one hand and "religion", "morality", "tradition" on the other.

Embryonic science is bad science, morally but also in terms of its scientific viability. Those who promote the myth that embryonic stem cells have medical uses display poor knowledge of science and a lack of ability (or willingness) to objectively weigh the evidence, whether they are trained scientists or ill-informed journalists replicating misinformation for respected news agencies, a respect which isn't deserved in the case of this Reuters misarticle.

IMF Ministers Meeting In Washington Fails To Address Undervalued Chinese Currency

So much for the beneficial effects of World Government. See http://www.manufacturingnews.com/news/08/1017/preeg.html

Security depends on manufacturing

There is a contradiction between 1) being the world's policeman fighting multiple foreign wars; and 2) taking an ideologically rigid free trade/laissez-faire approach to manufacturing. Without a home-based manufacturing sector, we lose the ability to pay for a military capacity - except by adopting massive and unsustainable state subsidies (see the demise of the Soviet Union); even more damaging is the fact that manufacturing provides a stimulus to scientific development. It is no accident that the greatest military powers in the modern age have been great manufacturing powers. For an example of how a globalised or flat-earth production chain directly impacts on security, read the Manufacturing News article concerning foreign-made electronic components used by the American military at: http://www.manufacturingnews.com/news/08/1117/counterfeitelectronics.html.

Yet the neo-conservatives/liberal imperialists have supported these contradictory policies since the fall of the Soviet Union. There were strong tendencies towards this in the 1980's, but the impact was not so obvious then; and Reagan at least imposed tariffs to protect vital industries.

Even if your foreign policy ambitions are not so grandiose as the neo-cons, you must still consider that we need to defend ourselves. With an imploding demographic structure and a de-industrialised economy, we are likely to be very vulnerable over the next 50 years. This is especially alarming given the high population growth in areas bordering Europe.

Medical discovery due to Adult Stem Cell research

As you might not have gathered from the coverage by headlines yesterday and BBC Radio this morning, the great medical advance resulting from stem cells has come from Adult stem cells, not embryonic stem cells. See Bristol University's news page (19 November 2008) for this, or go direct to: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2008/6010.html.

Bristol make it clear what kind of research it is, but the media usually doesn't. This is at best lazy, and at worst a silent conspiracy not to inform the public. By talking about "stem cells", most people will assume this means embryonic stem cells, and then support this morally dubious, if not downright evil, form of research.

To their credit, the Times have made it clear on their website today: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article5183686.ece

Stem cell research: confusion about adult stem cells and embryo stem cells

BBC Today programme 12 november – and many newspapers on 11 November
Surgeons hail stunning breakthrought for “stem cell research” [link] in Bristol. Now there are medical uses for stem cells. A key question, given the recent embryology bill, is whether it is adult stem cells or embryonic stem cells. Why do they omit to say?

We know that so far all of the successful applications of stem cells have come from adult stem cells and that embryo cell applications have not gone beyond their “tremendous promise”. The embryo research issue revealed little understanding of the detail by its supporters; when the fact was noted that embryonic cell research had not as yet brought any medical advances, they told us of the potential for embryonic cell research. This apparently is not seen by private investors, who are putting their money into adult stem cell research; hence the need for scientists working in the field to lobby for state funding.

Supporters of stem cell research tend to be on the liberal side of politics (including supposed “conservatives”). Their take on personal identity which informs the politics is shared by behaviourists of the 20th century and communists in Russia and Eastern Europe. It eschews talk of the soul and fails to find any unifying property that defines an individual. Identity is contingent, incremental, determined by the material. It follows that an embryo is a lot less than human. The opposing view that the embryo is human is associated very much with the catholic church, who have led the struggle against abortion; but their views seem to be held by many non-catholic and non-Christian conservatives, whose political views arise from the fact that they are not believers in the rationalist, materialist paradigm subscribed to by the left.

The embryo research debate has always been a totemic issue. It has been characterised as religion vs science, but the battle is really about a positivist conception of science, which takes the view that science is outside the realm of “morality” as they conceive it; its supporters tend to accept the Voltaire's wrong-headed critique of Christianity and the Catholic church as the enemy of progress and scientific endeavour. This is spite of the fact that the church sponsored research in the medieval and early modern period, that monasteries were hotbeds of technological innovation, that Copernicus was a catholic priest, that Galileo was initially supported by the Pope. Mud sticks, and accumulates if thrown often enough. On the BBC and virtually all mainstream media outlets in Britain, this view is repeated ad nauseam, so the supporters of this world view can take its acceptance for granted.

The supporters of embryo research say that they are supporting science. Well, they should do more to instill discipline into the school system; they should do more to promote manufacturing which needs science to innovate; then scientists would be paid more; while not discouraging girls to do science, maybe they should accept that there is likely to be more men than women in mathemtics and physics and that this is not a bad thing – and is in fact unimportant compared to whether we have qualified people. Embyro research is insignificant in relation to the above issues; yet it gains so much overt support. the conclusion I have reached is that their motivation is ideological, that this is another form of gesture politics. They are not supporting science so much as a liberal view of the world which sees objective science in opposition to conventional morality, as represented especially “religion”, the archetype of which is the liberal bete noire, the catholic church; they are fighting the battle of Galileo against the church all over again. They are not responding to the issue, but have instead laid aside any empirically based decision in favour of ideologically motivated gesture politics.