Leave it to Tricky Rick to dive ass first into science and come up with a wedge controversy benefitting quack cronies. A few months ago Perry had some fat sucked out, collected the adult stem cells in the waste, and then had them implanted hoping to speed recovery from back surgery. Now he wants to monetize the untested procedure:

The legislation, a bill amendment passed in the special session, would allow private companies to maintain banks that store stem cells taken from prospective patients for future treatment — a service for which Jones’ newly established bank charges $50,000 per patient. The legislation’s original draft was written by Jones and tweaked by Perry, according to correspondence obtained through the Texas Public Information Act.

So, collect adult stem cells from a patient, charge them a cool 50 grand, then charge them even more to inject those cells back into the same patient they came from. What am I missing? These adult stem cells are going to magically do something the zillions of adult stem cells already in the patient’s tissue aren’t doing? To my uninformed mind that sounds like a great way to induce raging, pre-mestatized cancer, and that’s on the very slim chance it has any effect at all.

But of course this isn’t about advancing research or helping patients. This is about promoting the myth that adult stem cells are the only ones researchers need, daring the dastardly FDA and other socialist agencies — with crazy ideas about protecting vulnerable people from dangerous quackery — to intervene, and most importantly, fleecing desperately ill people to enrich one of Perry’s many cronies.

We are ruled by delusional sociopaths and they’re brutally ignorant to boot.