Clark Withholds $60 Million Pledge to Stanford

vocaljess writes: "In an op-ed piece in Friday's New York Times (which you have to register to read, blah blah blah), Netscape creator Jim Clark has announced that he will withhold $60 million he had pledged to donate to Stanford University to build a center for biomedical engineering and science. He states "I believe our country risks being thrown into a dark age of medical research. Biologists are at the threshold of the most important set of discoveries in history, and rather than teach and lead, our politicians react and follow a conservative few. This legislative action will cause the United States to miss a revolution in biology.""

Alternate coverage

[Troodon]

BBCNews have covered this [bbc.co.uk],
which also forms part of one of their 'indepth' news anaylsis.
They also have a link to Stanford where their president has issued his responce [stanford.edu].

Re:Get a grip!

[the eric conspiracy]

both sides seem to be deliberately ignoring the the fact that human embryos are not the only source of human stem cells.

Not. It is quite clear from research to date that embyonic stem cells are the most useful type.

Re:And this helps by doing what?

[BarefootClown]

even if they aren't able to use it for stem cell research directly

Sure they can. President Bush's decision was that federal money may not be used to generate new stem cell lines from fetuses. Private money, like Clark's, can be used for anything. Federal money can even be used for some research, including research on existing cell lines, and creating new lines that do not come from fetuses (i.e. cells coming from adults, or from umbilical cords). Bush's decision does not affect Stanford's use of Clark's money in any way; Clark is just throwing a hissy-fit.

Re:Message to the Masses About the US Government

[Daffy Duck]

Let me guess.. you've just recently been re-reading your Ayn Rand collection?

I don't think the world is as black and white as you sketch here. For example, those terrible airline delays aren't only caused by aging FAA equipment, they're caused by the deregulated industry's capitalistic incentive to minimize costs by having fewer and larger hubs and maintaining fleets of the barest minimum possible size.

Being taxed half your income sucks and does seem unconstitutional, but it's better than the 90% brackets that used to exist (most ironically even through the 50's, when the nation was in a frenzy to rid itself of those damn communists), and still much lower than most other nations.

I don't see why you think government regulation is responsible for the high cost of health care. Don't you think the insurance industry has a whole lot more say in this? Ask a doctor.

The free market is difficult to apply to health care - you can't really comparison shop. Are you going to have the same operation done by three different surgeons to see who has the best price/performance ratio? Should you have no more qualifications on which to judge your doctors than the content of their advertisements? The unregulated free market solution to health care led to such great products as snake oil and heroin powder.

In principle (yeah, I know), the goverment funds research for things that will serve the public good. If all of this research were only done for a profit motive, then it would benefit only the highest bidder.

The driving force of capitalism is greed. You want your stuff. I don't know who I'm quoting here, but someone said "your property is only yours through the courtesy of those who don't take it from you." Who's protecting your property rights? The police - the government. Care to privatize the police force? That's great if you're the one with the most money to hire soldiers, and it will quickly lead to feudalism, the ultimate in freedom.

Part of government's function is to deal with the fact that we're living in a society and have to have a better way of getting along than just the law of the jungle. Centralized government clearly isn't the answer, but neither is a loose geographic agglomeration of 300,000,000 independent countries.

I've been ranting so long I forgot what I was saying. Well anyway, um, I disagree.

Re:The USA is doomed anyways

[Goonie]

I wouldn't be so sure about biotechnology. The European green movements have been fighting the introduction of GM crops for years, and they've managed to convince consumers that GM crops are dangerous to their health - ergo, governments have passed laws requiring that any food containing GM crops must be labelled as such, and consumers won't buy them. Hence, the interest in biotechnology for agriculture is apparently less keen.

As for the US's stone-age cellphone and television technologies, that is another example of how the distaste for government-imposed solutions has its downside - kind of like adoption of the metric system, in fact.

Re:"A conservative few..."

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? According to this Rasmussen poll [portraitofamerica.com], 16% of Americans consider themselves Liberals, 28% Conservatives, and 49% Moderates. Check your facts.