Stealing The Gold Ring

OK, I admit it: I had mixed emotions when the recent breakthrough on stem cell research was announced. Part of me was thrilled. My family is rife with Alzheimer's: my paternal grandfather, my father, and my brother all died from complications of this awful disease. To be told that scientists were making progress on stem cells in spite of being hobbled by the narrow-minded ideological insanity of the current administration injected me with a hope I haven't felt since the President vetoed the last attempt at opening this line of scientific inquiry.

Another part of me, however, groaned at the news because I knew the White House would be crowing about the results, claiming credit because of their stance. I didn't have to wait long, and when the anticipated crowing began to manifest, I was furious.

I wasn't the only person in this country who felt that way. Today's NY Times has an editorial on the unseemly and completely dishonest response from the White House.

Any claim that Mr. Bush’s moral stance drove scientists to this discovery must be greeted with particular skepticism. The primary discoverer of the new techniques is a Japanese scientist who was not subject to the president’s restrictions. The senior scientist on the American team told reporters that the political controversy and Bush restrictions set the research effort back about four to five years. [Emphasis added]

A sharper analysis of how the White House claims smell came in a column written by Ellen Goodman in yesterday's Boston Globe:

When the good news was announced, the White House had the gall - an Oval Office alternative for chutzpah - to claim the victory as theirs. "This is very much in accord with the president's vision from the get-go," said policy adviser Karl Zinsmeister. Without the slightest hint of irony, he suggested that their stalwart opposition actually fueled the scientists' success. Next thing you know, the president will nominate himself for the Nobel Prize in medicine. ...

This breakthrough was not the president's "vision from the get-go" or any other go. First of all, the Bush administration bet on the wrong horse - adult stem cells. Second, the researchers couldn't have gotten to step two without step one. They needed human embryos to learn how to do this without human embryos. They'll still need embryos for some time, as both a benchmark and a way to judge whether stem cells from skin are effective and safe.

Not only did the "vision" impede the science, the administration also slowed it by starving funding and scaring off researchers. So James Thomson, the biologist whose work forms the bookends of this research, offers this, um, dedication: "My feeling is that the political controversy set the field back four or five years." ...

So this success is dedicated to the scientists who freed themselves from the clutches of politics. But not to the president, without whom, well, this too would have been done years earlier. [Emphasis added]

Five years is a long time for people with diabetes, Alzheimer's, spinal cord injuries, and a host of other conditions to suffer needlessly. And all because some twit with power decided to play to his base, and base is a pretty good description of those people.

Give the laurels to those brave souls who managed this breakthrough under near impossible restrictions. And shun those who are trying to steal them.

Bastards.