Clark Withholds $60 Million Pledge to Stanford 469
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.""
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:And this helps by doing what? (Score:3, Interesting)
And you're critisizing him?
Heck, I'm having second thoughts about donating $5 without being pretty damn sure that they will come to good use. Dunno about you, but I can't really be upset with anyone who doesn't want to part with $60 million without being pretty damn sure they will be used in a way s/he finds acceptable.
Re:Huh? (Score:2, Interesting)
Alright. You start taking insulin shots in the stomach. 3-7 times a day. Oh, you also have to prick your fingers every time you want to eat. While you are at it, get Parkinson's disease and Multiple Sclerosis.
Then you can tell me that the moral grounds are wrong.
The money is headed for Europe, you fsckheads! (Score:2, Interesting)
By not giving his $60 million to Stanford, Clarke can instead give it to a research facility that can do useful research with the money- without being hampered by illogical directives from a president who is openly hostile to scientific research. Bush has prohibited all potentially meaningful stem cell research in this country. But stem cell research (or cryptography research, or any scientific research for that matter) is not going to stop just because it's been prohibited in the U.S. by American zealotry and corruption.
Stanford is still getting money from Clarke- just $60 million less of it. They're still getting much more than that from him for other research (that the American government has not yet forbidden). Anybody who chooses to waste $60 million, by donating it to researchers who have been forbidden by the American government from making effective use of it, is a fool.
In related news, Russia is warning its programmers to avoid traveling to the U.S.A. I feel so proud to be an American.
Pinched for money (Score:3, Interesting)
Not to say that supporting scientists who persue research within the limits set by Mr. Bush is already a considerable step.
Re:Drawing the line... (Score:2, Interesting)
Well, if we had limited but unconditional funding, we might have new skin for burn victims, or new kidney cells for diabetes patients, or real treatment for spinal cord injuries so that patients could walk again. While a cure for Alzheimer's might not help us "live forever", everyone agrees that it would be a nice thing to have during the last 10-15 years of life. You are disingenuously reducing the issue at stake to simply making people live longer, which is not the promise of stem cell research at all and would be a dubious benifit at most.
It's wrong to take another human life to save another. I know many Slashdot readers don't consider embryos to be alive (and their all going to be destroyed anyways), but a lot of people do. A lot of people aren't willing to overlook the means because of the ends.
Then where is your outrage against the fertility clinics themselves, who are the source of all these embryos? There isn't a peep from you morons on this subject. Because if the purpose is to make a baby, you are willing to overlook the means because of the ends. You concentrate all your energies on who gets them after they're not needed anymore- stem cell researchers, or the garbage can? Now they'll all be thrown out, thanks to you. Meanwhile fertility clinics continue their operations without any interference or harassment, since you take it for granted that abortion clinics are the source of all these embryos anyway- which they are not.
What if someone decided that it was OK to harvest organs from orphans less then a year old?
We'd say they were nuts. (What are you singling out orphans for, anyway?) But if it was a kidney, and if it were, say, to save a twin's life, then maybe some of us would agree that the transplantation made sense. We'd have to weigh the situation and make a reasonable decision based on it, something which you seem to assume is impossible.
I mean, is a three month old baby alive? It can't talk, it can't sue anyone, it can't even feed it self. If no one put food in front of it, it would die.
This is a really strange definition of being "alive". I think we can all agree that if a live 3 year old baby fails your criteria for being alive, the baby is still alive- your definition is just stupid and needs more work.
So why can't we SAVE the lives of `wanted' children with `unwanted' children? Because it's wrong, it's murder. Some may accuse me of forcing my right-wing extremist conservative religious views on other people, but you have to draw the line somewhere.
So you have drawn your line in the craziest place imaginable, because of your hocus pocus religious beliefs, and now you demand that the world conform to your wishes and adopt your line as its own. Who gave you the impression that the line was yours and yours alone to draw anyway? The truth is that no line you draw will ever be in the correct place in all cases. You leave yourself no room to account for exceptions, special cases, and emergencies. Quit drawing silly lines for us.
I guess well all just have to spend our tax money on boring things like cancer research. Ugh. How many lives will THAT save?
Don't be so smug. Cancer and embryology are closely related fields. Bush has stuck a knife into the heart of U.S. cancer research with this ignorant and superstitious decision.
People always make fun of Stalin for declaring computer science to be a "false science" and squashing all research in it in his own country. Bush apparently thinks this is a mistake worth repeating.
Re:Get a grip! (Score:2, Interesting)
Researchers are not ignoring adult stem cell research; I'm afraid that your perception is misinformed, in this instance.
Researchers have repeatedly stated that while adult stem cell research shows promise, at this time it is no substitute for embryonic stem cell research. In fact, the progress made in adult stem cell research has relied upon research already done on embryonic stem cells.
Furthermore, researchers are on record as saying that we simply don't know yet if adult stem cells have the same abilities as embryonic stem cells.
Yale researcher Diane Krause testified before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee in July:
"Work on embryonic stem cells is invaluable and work on adult derived stem cells is just beginning... To close off one avenue because of premature assumptions about the other is to play the odds with people's lives."
Adult stem cells may be, in your opinion, a "perfectly legitimate means of acquiring stem cells," but it remains to be seen whether they can effectively replace embryonic stem cell research. One thing is clear, however; researchers acknowledge the research that has been done on adult cells, and have cautioned that research must go forward on both types of cells.
Stem Cells don't come from Fetuses (Feti?) (Score:2, Interesting)
I spent a lot of time researching this when my wife and I pursued Invitro Fertilization. Fetuses don't come along until I bleieve 4th or 5th month. They are Embryo's for a while.
The problem with some conservatism is ignorance. You should really look into where Stem cells come from, sometimes they are 'fake' fertilized eggs that have no chance of ever becoming a human.
The last paragraph is my $0.02 and my opionon only. The rest is medical terminology.
Too Bad he really can't afford 60Mill (Score:1, Interesting)
Federal funding restrictions (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem with the decision to restrict federal funding of stem cell research is that the restriction also applies to indirect costs. Indirect costs expenses are charged by the universities to pay for building upkeep, electricity, janitorial services, and anything else that is necessary to maintain the research space for the researcher. At Stanford University, for example, for every dollar that a university researcher spends from his/her federal grant, the university charges an additional 60 cents to the grant. The number varies from place to place, but it is usually a surcharge of this magnitude. It's sort of like rent.
In order for new stem cell research to be done in a Stanford University building, no federal funding can be used, direct or indirect. So if a non-stem cell researcher down the hall receives a federal grant, then the stem cell researcher in the same building may not use any money, government or private, to perform research in that building. The restricted research must be done in a dedicated building for which all indirect costs are paid for through private funding. The building costs therefore may no longer be shared among researchers in several fields, but must be paid for by only researchers in the restricted field. A new research lab building costs of order $400 million to build. This amount of money plus the upkeep costs is too much for any single researcher or small group of researchers to raise through private grants. So the main effect of President Bush's executive order is to move new stem cell research out of university research labs altogether, in most cases.
Okay, so the research is moved to private labs run by private companies, so what? The main effect here is that private companies will be reluctant to share new discoveries with the scientific community, unless the research is sufficently advanced to get a patent. Otherwise, there's no way businesses are going to recover their investment. Even worse, new processes can be kept proprietary if it suits the business strategy. Also, there is the phenomenon of the 'strategic patent,' where company A discovers that company B is working on a certain process, and to block them, company A will patent a necessary step in the process to make it cost-ineffective for company B to continue the research. (Note that this doesn't necessarily mean that company A plans on using company B's process.) New discoveries will still be made but the discoveries will come at a slower rate because of the lack of knowledge-sharing and of corporate hijinks.
So the net effect is that people who need new treatments will have to wait longer for them. When they do come, most likely the patents will be awarded to academic researchers in the U.K. or elsewhere and those countries will see the benefits of the new economies formed by this technology.
I wonder if the people who oppose this research now are going to refuse the new treatments developed thereof when it is their kids who are dying. I predict that they will find themselves able to temporarily suspend their moral judgements.
In other words, ignorant (Score:3, Interesting)
Religous conservatives are ignorant of science, history, and usually even their own scripture. For example, in Exodus 21:22 it's explicitly stated that killing a fetus is in no way equivalent to killing a person. The penalty for the first is a fine, the penalty for the second is death.
Fundamentalists reject the accumulated knowledge of the human race because they think all questions are answered in a single book (pick one, any one) written thousands of years ago in our barbaric past. This, my friend, is the very definition of ignorance. Fundamentalists might not like being called on it, but it doesn't make the charge any less true.
They're the same group of people that have opposed every technological change throughout history. They'll have as much success with this crusade as they have with all their others. And they won't hesitate to enjoy the fruits of this research in their old age.
In another generation we'll be shocked that foolish people ever objected to regenerating new livers and such and be glad that we've moved beyond the ignorance of our ancestors.