Holy hell, Bush does know about veto power

[woodbuck27]

Canada Government Authorizes Embryonic Stem Cell Research for First Time

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor

June 26, 2006


Ottawa, Canada (LifeNews.com) --

The Canadian government, for the first time ever, has authorized embryonic stem cell research with taxpayer funds. Canada's health agency says it will allow days-old unborn children to be destroyed for their stem cells in studies conducted by a team of researchers across the country.

The governing council of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) gave conditional approval for the scientists to use both "fresh" and frozen human embryos in the research.

The agency reviewed the requests for funds for a year and has authorized the scientists to proceed with the $523,000 project**.

The CIHR approval is conditional and based on the receipt of consent forms from the couples who have donated the embryos from fertility clinics for the research. The Canadian Stem Cell Network, which receives federal funds, authorized the project last year.

The network's executive director, Drew Lyall, told the Edmonton Journal newspaper that there's "no reason" the forms won't be process and the research advanced.

"It's an important new project to be moving forward," he told the Journal.

The research comes one year after leading Canadian bioethicists said they worried women would be coerced into donating their eggs or embryos for research.

Andras Nagy of Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital, Jamie Piret at the University of British Columbia and Mick Bhatia at McMaster University will head up the research team.

Last June, Nagy produced Canada's first embryonic stem cell lines and made the two lines available to other scientists.

The stem cell network has not said how many human embryos will be killed for stem cells for the study.

Embryonic stem cell research has yet to produce any cures or treatments and never been tried on humans because of problems progressing past the animal research stage.

Meanwhile, adult stem cells have produced dozens of treatments for patients with various ailments.

comment: woodbuck27

** That doesn't seem like much money. That's just the cost of a decent home in alot of major City's up here. In 30 years that will be the cost of a two car garage.

So that is where we are - in this important issue in Canada.

[HarveyWallbangers]

Funny how all of these debates revolve around the issue of the "freedom to take life", even though that freedom is contrary to the majority of stated religions in the world. As a nation, we've made it OK to kill Iraqis in the name of OUR cause. Israelis and Lebanese fighters are now killing each other for their cause. Protestants during the Reformation killed for their cause. Catholics during the crusades. Christians purified through inquisitions. Killing for a cause has happened throughout history. Humans are good at killing each other. One could argue that we are entertained by it.

I may actually end up agreeing with you on this issue, but I think equating this to the war in Iraq is ludicrous. After Saddam's regime you could argue that we took the moral high ground by what we've TRIED to do in Iraq. It's not an apt comparison.

What I find hypocritical are the people that throw Bush under the bus on every issue. That's laughable. Get some nuts to think independently on issues, know the facts, and try to see the other side of the issue. I don't agree with Bush on the death penalty or his liberal spending. I agreed with Clinton when he "killed innocent lives" in Bosnia. It's seems the same people are opposed to his/conservative viewpoints on every issue.

People want to paint him bad on this issue (which I think is mostly a media and election year creation). He has gone further than Clinton by opening up federal funding for this--whether it was politically easier to do or not. It seems to me that he tried to find a middle ground on the issue. I'm sure there are some that oppose any embryonic stem cell research. There are others that are on the opposite end of the spectrum. Hell, i'm sure there are some who think it would be okay to abort a 9 month old fetus (the ones that believe that human life doesn't begin until birth) and use them for stem cell research. To me it seems that he has found some kind of middle ground on the issue. Apparently, he can't win on any issue for some people.

[Fosco33]

This issue is so politicized, and I bet 90% of the folks posting on here have no idea what the real facts are about this issue are. I'm guessing that most who have posted on this thread don't care. I can see both sides of this issue. It's not as cut and dried as it seems--like most issues.

Whatever happened to the old style debating technique where you were taught to first argue the opposite viewpoint of your own. It's a very neat trick. It makes people realize that there is more gray to most issues than black and white.

Good call, Harv. I've followed this issue for years. While Bush's veto may have some warrants (i.e., no fetal farms), it could have been line item changed and sent back to Congress - I think.

[Fosco33]

Bush administration is doing some political sidestepping before the midterms on stem cell use....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/24/AR2006072400990.html

Excerpts:

Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 25, 2006; Page A07

President Bush does not consider stem cell research using human embryos to be murder, the White House said yesterday, reversing its description of his position just days after he vetoed legislation to lift federal funding restrictions on the hotly disputed area of study.

But polls show that most Americans see such research as a potential key to treating Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, spinal cord injuries and other afflictions.

EDIT:

I saw this as well on JSO regarding groups targeting WARF's broad patents.

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=475031

Excerpts:

The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights in Santa Monica, Calif., and the Public Patent Foundation in New York filed a request Tuesday with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office asking it to overturn three important patents on embryonic stem cells awarded to James A. Thomson. The University of Wisconsin-Madison scientist first isolated stem cells from human embryos in 1998.

WARF, the university's patenting and licensing arm, holds the broadly worded patents. In its 80 years, the foundation has amassed a $1.5 billion endowment and guided discoveries such as vitamin D and the widely used blood-thinning drug known as coumadin to the market.

But the embryonic stem cell patents are impeding scientific progress and forcing companies to locate overseas to avoid WARF's "draconian" licensing terms, said Dan Ravicher, an attorney with the New York foundation, which he said was founded in 2003 to "remove the pollution from the patent system."

Invitrogen Corp. of Carlsbad, Calif., said recently that it is locating its stem-cell research in Asia to avoid the WARF patents.

"Patents are like guns," Ravicher said. "A gun in the hand of a police officer is a good thing; a gun in the hand of a madman is a bad thing."

Although he wouldn't call WARF a "madman," he said, the technology transfer organization is harming science and California taxpayers and causing public harm by failing to "stand up and admit they got something they didn't deserve."

Researchers and others in California are getting more interested in the WARF patents as the money from Proposition 71 - the initiative that California voters passed in November to create the nation's largest stem cell research fund - begins to get allocated. Proponents of the initiative have estimated that the resulting research could produce therapies that bring in $4 billion of yearly revenue within 10 years.

In the pharmaceutical arena, royalties on basic patents typically are 2% to 5% of product revenue, which would mean those estimates could translate into as much as $200 million a year in royalties for WARF, Balbus said.

Frenchick said the patent office will give WARF a chance to respond to the challenge, and that its patents will be presumed valid while the patent office evaluates the request.