Overdosed on Stem Cells Yet?

If not, read on.

The Cato Institute's Michael Tanner has a great op-ed in today's San Francisco Chronicle in opposition to federal funding of stem cell research.

[T]his is not a debate about whether embryonic stem-cell research should continue -- it will. Rather, like so many other issues in Washington, it is a fight about who gets how much of the taxpayers' money. Stem-cell researchers have become just one more special interest at the federal trough. And, as such, the coming debate is a perfect example of how science becomes politicized when government money is involved.

He gives a comprehensive list of all the private stem cell research that is taking place, as well as a pretty thought out analysis of how federal funding for stem cell research could actually set research back.

Meanwhile, Reason's Ronald Bailey channels Charles Dickens and argues that the ban on using federal money for stem cell research is the best of times and the worse of times.

The restrictions probably have slowed research a bit because researchers have had to build completely new infrastructure using private donations and state funds in order to avoid mixing federal funds from their other research. In other words, stem cell researchers who want to work on new stem cell lines have to find money to pay for new standalone labs, new microscropes, new petri dishes, and so forth.

On the other hand, President Bush's limits on research have provoked an outpouring of private and state funding that I have argued previously may well exceed whatever federal funding might have otherwise been available.