The National Review Online (please note today's DBD cartoon) features correspondence between Eric Cohen, Jonathan Moreno, and Sam Berger, concerning Mr. Cohen's article from May on the Castle-DeGette bill and the loosening the funding restrictions on destructive embryonic research.
I am surprised that Moreno/Berger warn,
". . . politicized discussions of scientific issues are likely to end in hyperbole."
Moreno and Berger are associated with the Center for American Progress. In fact, Moreno is Director of the Progressive Bioethics Initiative, a sort of subsidiary of the CAP, founded to counter the Progressive's perception that current bioethics centers are dominated by conservatives. I disagree with that notion, since most of the University bioethics departments are in no way conservative.
Nevertheless, the point of the original argument was to answer political questions by opponents of the President's embryonic stem cell research policy. We are discussing Federal research funds. I have never seen a tax-funded program that was not influenced by and subject to political agendas.
If it's true that politics contaminates science, then its all the more reason to keep government money out of scientific research!
1 comment:
Those in the middle look like conservatives to liberals, and like liberals to conservatives. It is a very uncomfortable place to be.
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