Why It Matters

The Bush Administration and its fundie supporters like to point out that the ban on embryonic stem cell research is merely a matter of tax money being spent. Research laboratories are free to study stem cells on their own dime. What they conveniently (deliberately?) leave out is that any research lab that receives federal funds (and most do) is forced to segregate stem cell research from anything that might be paid for with tax money. The LATimes has a good article on this:

For biologist Meri Firpo, the controversy over human embryonic stem cells boils down to pens.

In one of her laboratories — the one that gets government money to study federally approved stem cells — researchers are required to use Paper Mate Flexgrips.

Just across the hall is a nearly identical laboratory set up with private funds so she can study new embryonic stem cell lines that do not have President Bush's seal of approval. Firpo requires lab workers there to use Uni-balls to make sure no federally funded pen finds its way into forbidden territory.

It's an admittedly peculiar situation, but Firpo, a professor at the University of Minnesota, said she was not taking any chances. A willful violation of federal policy could make her liable for criminal and civil penalties. Even a mistake might imperil federal grants for her lab — and for the rest of the university.

[...]

Bush's embryonic stem cell policy, which now restricts federal support to research involving about 20 cell lines, has created a logistical nightmare for science.

Researchers who study both federally approved and unapproved stem cells have had to buy duplicate equipment to conduct their experiments, then set up elaborate systems to keep their work completely separate.

[...]

"You can imagine that someone wishing to cause you great trouble could do so if they could find in your accounting any evidence that you happened to commingle funds," MIT's Young said.

Some of the scenarios scientists are contemplating seem flat-out ridiculous given the collaborative nature of research.

If privately funded students make a discovery on an unapproved cell line, can they share that data with those funded by the NIH? If a privately funded researcher extracts proteins or DNA from an unapproved cell line, can they be analyzed with federal money?

"We have to hire lawyers to give us opinions on this," Young said.

So research labs are forced to spend money - large amounts of it - to essentially duplicate what already exists in order to comply with federal law designed to placate a bunch of flat-earthers.

This is the logic that rules Bush's America.


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