More stem cell talk

DarkSyde is on the stem cell story, and he uses Neurotopia’s summary of the biology.

I just don’t understand the other side’s argument. Adult stem cells are not a substitute for embryonic stem cells, at least not yet. The anti-stem cell research crowd wants to claim that we don’t need ES cells, that AS cells will do everything we need, but they don’t think it through. If we want to make AS cells that are functionally equivalent to ES cells, we need to understand ES cells—but they want to deny us the ability to look at ES cells. Furthermore, if we could convert an AS cell line to totipotency what we’d have is…millions of cells we could replicate in the lab, each of which has the potential to become a human being. We’d go from a few “snowflakes” to a blizzard. Then what?

A stem cell veto prediction

Despite Brownback’s snowflake stunt and Santorum’s insistence that zygotes are persons, the House stem cell bill, HR810, has passed, as have the two inconsequential smokescreen bills that Santorum tossed up. It’s going to be interesting to hear Bush’s stammered excuses when he vetos it; I’d figure he’d be reluctant to do the veto because it would mean taking undeniable responsibility for an action, something he doesn’t like to do, but then I realized he has another out. He’s going to blame God for telling him to kill the bill.

I predict that he will make some pious excuse like that when he vetoes it. That’s our George: he didn’t do it, it’s not his fault, the buck stops somewhere else, he’s a delegater, not a responsibility-taker.

David Prentice’s shoddy stem cell scholarship

A reader sent me copy of a letter that will be published in Science this week, criticizing the dishonest tactics of the anti-scientific adult stem cell “advocates” (in quotes because they aren’t really science advocates of any kind—they’re only using it as an issue to limit stem cell research.) Anyway, it raises the interesting question of who you’re going to believe: scientists with expertise in the issues under discussion, or a flunky for Sam Brownback and shill for the religious right?

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Hmmm…maybe we should form a vocal voting bloc…

From the insightful Digby comes this insightly insight:

Why do the vast majority secularists vote for the Democrats? Could it possibly be for the same reason that African Americans do? Could it be that the Republican Party is so implicitly or explicitly religiously intolerant that they have no place in it?

They don’t even need to be intolerant, though…just being implicitly and explicitly religious, period, full stop, is sufficiently off-putting. The intolerance is the creamy rich arsenic-laced frosting layered thickly on top of the putrefying fruitcake of superstitious dogma—excuse me if I’d rather not have a taste. I think our interests diverge from those of the religious African Americans because, if Obama is any example, they reject the intolerance but savor the religion.

By the way, take a look at this map of the state-by-state distribution of unbelievers, also from Digby’s post. Typically, “no religion” is the third most popular choice in most states, with a few exceptions (I’m very proud of my home state of Washington.) So why do politicians so studiously avoid courting that common demographic?*

*Rhetorical question…in a winner-take-all game, third place is no place, and it’s not as if the godless form a coherent bloc anyway.

Stem cell bait-and-switch

I’m taking it easy here in the fabulous Van Dusen mansion, a bed and breakfast where I’m staying tonight, and I thought I’d browse through the stem cell legislation that’s being considered in the senate right now. It’s strange: one substantive bill has come up from the House, and all of a sudden two more bills have been proposed on the floor of the Senate.

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Words of wisdom

Fewer open threads and more of this would make it clear why Atrios is popular.

I started this blog and adopted this style in part because I thought it was important to introduce a more combative and caustic discourse on our side. I’d be quite happy and comfortable in a world where politics more closely resembled an academic seminar – that is where I come from, after all – but we don’t live in that world and it’s a tragic mistake to pretend we do.

It’s a tragic mistake to think most creationists will be won over by kind and supportive conversation over a cup of coffee, too, or by any kind of smokescreen argument presented because we think it’s what they want to hear.

Ken Lay Resurrection Watch

In light of this startling comparison at the Ken Lay funeral, we’re going to have to keep on eye on the urn containing his cremated ashes.

The Reverend Dr. Bill Lawson compared Lay with civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesus Christ, and said his name would eventually be cleared.

I don’t think there’s much risk that he’ll rise again. Can you imagine Satan showing him all the kingdoms of the world, saying “All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me,” and Kenny Boy failing to rush to his knees and sing hosannas on the spot?

Lighting a fire under the president

George W Bush hasn’t vetoed a single bill in all these long, long years of his presidency. Guess what issue might finally convince him to move?

He’s willing to veto any expansion of stem cell research.

That’s our George. Science isn’t part of his base, so he’ll willingly throw that away to make the church-based ignoramuses happy. Zygotes must be spared! It’s the ones that have been born that can be used as cannon fodder.

Preach it, brother

Billmon reviews An Inconvenient Truth, and its more of a lament for the fact that science and reason seem to have little compelling power to a nation raised on ranting idiots and authoritarian dogma.

In my darker moments, it sometimes seems as if the entire world is in the middle of a fierce backlash against the Age of Enlightenment, the Scientific Revolution and the ideological challenges they posed to the old belief systems. The forces of fundamentalism and obscurantism appear to be on the march everywhere—even as the moral and technological challenges posed by a global industrial civilization grow steadily more complex.

I think a lot of us have that feeling nowadays.