Dean's World

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist recently came out in favor of expanding Federal funding for stem cell research. This caused some Republicans to brand him a "traitor" (absurd) and to be shamelessly pandering to the New York Times (as if they had any clout with Republican primary voters). INDC Journal has a pretty good analysis of why this hyperbolic hyperventilating is silly.

That said: I'm not sure why more people aren't asking whether Federal funding of stem cell research is a good idea in the first place.

I'm no doctrinaire libertarian, but I know more than one scientist who has a pretty dim view of the enetire Federal research grant process. Whether they work in major research areas like cancer or AIDS, or minor obscure areas no one's heard of, the complaint is the same: politicians and government bureaucrats are generally scientifically stupid and don't understand the issues they're funding research for. They thus usually wind up giving control of all spending priorities to small cliques of researchers who effectively control all the grant money--and fully credentialed, credible scientists who question the reigning hypotheses or want to take a new approach to the subject are frequently frozen completely out.

If private industry is unreliable because they are obsessed with the profit motive, government-funded research is obsessed with scientific fads, and with research that sounds exciting but may be bogus. Look at the ridiculous amount of money that was spent in government grants to study whether low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets would prevent heart disease. Researchers who questioned this hypothesis rarely received any funding at all, and were routinely treated as dangerous lunatics. In the late 1990s two British scientists finally burst the bubble and proved that despite two decades and billions in research, not one study had ever shown that these diets reduced heart disease mortality or overall mortality (see The Low-Fat, Low-Cholesterol Diet Is Ineffective by L.A. Corr & M.F. Oliver)--and yet still researchers who want to research the "benefits" of low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets often get grant money, and scientists who want to study radically different approaches to human nutrition have a hard time landing any grant money at all.

Worse, because of the entire system of government grants, universities which used to value basic research, and treasure scientists based on their accomplishments in the field, have in recent decades grown more and more obsessed with money--specifically, government money. Scientists who can land fat grants from the government get tenure, respect, and lab space. Those who can't wind up treated with contempt.

Which leads to the other problem with the system today: the tendency to treat scientists like stars, as opposed to treating them like scientists. Or, worse then treating them as stars, they often get treated like members of a priestly class. All based on this holy halo of "researcher working for the good of humanity." Never mind questioning whether what they're researching is particularly valuable, or whether their methodologies are sound, or whether their results are solid, or whether their rivals might have better ideas.

The presumption many people work under is that private industry will not fund so-called "blue sky" research. My own view is that private industry often fails to fund it simply because they know they can depend on the government to do it for them. Meanwhile, the environment that used to be hospitable to the researcher who didn't care about money--the university--has become every bit as money-obsessed as any other large corporation.

I understand why some people have moral qualms about Federal funding for stem cell research. They're not qualms I share, simply because I don't believe a fertilized egg or an embryonic cluster of a few dozen cells is a human being. Sorry, I don't. But I do wonder who's going to get this money, and whether it's honestly going to be put to good use. I don't think that's an unreasonable question, especially considering how rarely anybody asks it of any federal funding of research. The working assumption: "Government money for research is good. Opposing it is bad." All thought stops there.

I look at all the posturing about all the miracle cures that stem cell research is supposed to provide, and I also wonder: if they fail to produce such results, will those who claimed that this funding was vital even notice? Will there ever come a point where they decide it was a waste of time? Will there ever come a point where they wonder, "Hmm, what other research would have been worth funding instead of all this?"