Biggest danger is financial. The elderly will start to shift their wealth to investments in other countries that are researching such innovations instead of companies tied down by restrictions due to the current "fundamentalist-dominated" regime.

And not just the elderly, Laurence. Any parent of a child with any sort of congenital health problem or physcial defect.

Or any would-be parent, unwilling to have kids for fear of passing along a bad gene.

Hell, even middle-age people, really starting to look seriously at their portfolios.

That's a lot of voters. A lot of very vocal voters.

When you say "Republicans are wrong on abortion" are you talking about the issue as a whole or just in relation to stem cell research?

I'm not going to start a debate about the issue - Lord knows I've been through it enough already. I'm just trying to get clarification on your position.

VP you break my heart. The abortion issue, by any objective measure, has been of great help to the GOP for the past 30 years and until the clearly unconstituional Roe v Wade is overturned, (and maybe even after that) it will continue to help. I wont attempt to engage in an extended disussion as to why most abortions should be outlawed, but suffice it to say that our judges have made this decision for us, which alone should put you in the same bed with the social conservatives you and too many other bloggers seem to feel have cooties and can't stand to be seen with. As for the stem-cell issue, even if we concede the health benefits (dubious tho possible) we're still back on that slippery slope of taking human lives for the possible benefit of others. Presumably, you have no objection to Chinese prisons harvesting kidneys and other vital organs for American transplant patients?

My advice for you, Reynolds, Postrel, et al- get over your cootie fixation, register Republican, vote for anybody this side of Pat Buchanan (tho im not sure which side at this point) take 3/4 of a loaf on the economy, the war, etc. and join the real world of achieving the possible.

BTW, my guess is that if you took a vote between the parties on paring back the FDA to allow for reasonable regulations on new drugs, as opposed to the 10 year marathon session we have now, I don't think you'd find much support from the dems. Haven't hear a peep from bloggers on this. Why not?

We'll go from bottom to top.

The blogosphere has left the FDA alone? You should have used the search function on my site. http://www.vodkapundit.com/archives/000127.php

"One of my favorite subjects of scorn, those bastards at the FDA, are still being bastards according to drug companies in this Wall Street Journal Story...."

Here's another: http://www.vodkapundit.com/archives/000080.php

I think you'll enjoy both rants, from way back in January. But don't tell me I've given the FDA a free ride.

Secondly, when did I ever say I'm in favor of Roe v Wade? Bad case, bad law. What I am in favor of is abortion. I'm not merely pro-choice, I am pro-abortion. What we need is a Congress (or statehouses) ballsy enough to make it legal everywhere. Such decisions to not belong in the hands of an unelected Supreme Court.

I'll grant you restrictions on partial-birth abortions. If it can survive naturally outside the womb, then it's a child, and deserves legal protection. Although a case can be made that any woman who can't make up her mind after seven or eight months has no business carrying a child to term.

As for "taking a human life," you're talking theology -- and I've made it abundantly clear several times, that I simply won't. Well, other than to say that theology has no business in lawmaking.

On the other side of the politics of this, the pro-abortion crowd sees support for stem cell research as another way to objectify (syn. -- commodify, dehumanize) the fetus, and thus make abortion more acceptable. Thus, embryonic stem cell research has been touted as the cure for everything. The actual science of it is, however, quite different, as noted in this very comprehensive summary of the state of the art.

Upon clarification we agree. I'd like to see abortion legal, inexpensive and rare - but rare by individual choice, not government coercion.

The reason we need government-funded research is because, quite often, business does NOT see a potential profit in doing the sort of research that has led to the most amazing medical discoveries of our time. Say that a drug company has X dollars to spend on research. Is the company more likely to spend X dollars on basic research that has the potential to lead to a better diagnostic test or drug for a metabolic disorder (the sort of disease that is rare, but devastates families who must watch their children waste away) or will the money be spent on a new pain reliever that is less irritating for the stomach? The profit lies with the latter choice, and business (doing what it should, in a properly run world) is bound to choose the more profitable path. Government can't solve every problem (to say the very least) but there are some problems that government is in a better position to solve.

We have to give up the (speculative) benefits of governmental action to get the (clear and definite) benefits of restricting government to its proper sphere. If government were not messing with biological research AND were not, through the FDA, prolonging insanely the process of deciding whether new medical procedures were safe and effective, both tasks could be done more quickly. The tort system remains a better guarantor of efficacy and safety for new medical developments than a bloated bureaucracy. I can't believe there wouldn't be profit in making the crippled walk, especially extremely rich cripples like Reeve.

There is this word called "ethics". Its subjective. I'm assuming, Stephen, that you have some ethics of your own about what is and isn't proper research. For instance, I'll assume you think that involuntary research on people is wrong. Well, some people find that stem cell research is contrary to their ethics. That doesn't make them "wrong", because its not a factual question but an ethical one. It means you don't share their ethics.

Wow, someone allows their "ethics" to stand in the way of "health care treatments, high-paying jobs, and scientific research", oh the horror. Now if you want to show that Bush's ethics are shared by a significant fraction of the American public, then maybe a discussion will erupt.

Thank you Michael for that link. Now, if I knew HTML, I'd link you to Cut on the Bias which has posted a quite devastating takedown of Reeves by a fellow wheelchair boundee.

To Stephen, my bad on the FDA issue tho as you point out I referred to blogosphere, which is not yet synonymous with VP, tho one can always hope. Now, on the larger issue of abortion on demand, I thank you for crediting me with theological powers, but alas I'm afraid that as an agnostic admirer of religion, I'll have to decline. On the other hand, I would submit that basic powers of observation and some common sense with a little medical science would allow that a one month old fetus with unique genetic material, pain sensors, brainwaves and little tiny arms, legs, head, etc, does in fact qualify as a LIVING HUMAN BEING. And tho the supportive wisdom of many/most religions on this topic gathered over thousands of years is not to be gainsaid, I'm afraid that I reached this conclusion without benefit of my one semester of college religion or any other organized indoctrination I may have been subject to. The fact that this innocent LIVING HUMAN BEING is dependent on its mother's placentia and cannot be seen by the naked eye hardly qualifies he/she for the chopping block lacking the protection any other slightly older LIVING HUMAN BEING is entitled to outside the womb.

That said, you do partially redeem yourself on the issue of Roe v Wade. Nothing so perplexes me as those (like my own mother) who oppose abortion after say 3 mos and yet still support that decision out of some misguided inertia. If we can agree to overturn R v W and then get it on from there, I think most prolifers could live with that.

OK, I was confused by the comment you quoted:

"I'm NOT in favor of the government spending money on these things that many of us consider akin to murder. On the other hand, I don't see why the government should stand in the way of private entrepreneurs either."

Er, so it's OK for private industry to spend money on something "akin to murder"? How does that make sense?

It's amazing Kevin how if you leave a few words out of the quote it changes the whole meaning isn't it? For example you could have accurately said :

"Er, so it's OK for private industry to spend money on something "many of us consider akin to murder"?

Since there is not a sufficent agreement that these cells are alive it is a moral choice for an individual to make. Ultimately (in many belief systems) the individual is judged by a higher power than the FDA.

Basically it comes down to this. I think it is wrong, but I am not so certain that it is wrong (wrong, say like Rape or Murder) that I would be comfortable with the government restricting you from making that moral choice for yourself.

Theology has no place in law making?

Maybe, maybe...

But morality does. When you say you are pro-abortion, apparently without qualification, does that include being in favor of partial-birth abortion? My own readings on the subject seem to make the practice frequently synonomous with infanticide, which I find (to say the least) disquieting.

I also find it disquieting to think that we need a law saying that if a baby is born alive, you can't just let it die.

There are distinctions to be made, and I only see two bright lines - conception and birth. I have no problem with contraception, and I have no problem with people having babies.

I do have a problem with abortions in between - when is an abortion ever a good thing in its own right? I will say it may not always be the worst thing - but I can't see where its ever a good thing.

I have a problem with treating a person as an object - and I think abortion and embryonic stem cell research take us into that territory. I'm not sure the benefits are worth that trip.

Agree with Parker 100%.

Generally, I don't think unfettered science and medical advancement is a good thing, everywhere and always. We get pushed into moral vacuums with too little time to decide how an issue fits into our social norms, then it becomes a political football, and reasoned discussion ceases. But, the biggest problem for me is this obsession with treating people, including unborn babies, as objects without souls; this is decisively *not* a positive development for society.

Arguing about when it becomes a baby is a sign that the moral compass is already on the fritz. It creeps me out to hear people even discuss it, like it's a Brave New World or something. It truly diminishes us as people.