More credit that isn't due

I posted last month about the inappropriateness of the administration trying to claim some of the credit for recent stem cell research which may allow the cultivation of pluripotent stem cells without the need to destroy human embryos.

Late last week, conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, who knows a great deal about spin but apparently very little about science, authored a column lauding Bush's foresight on the matter, and claiming vindication for his his approach. Krauthammer ends the piece by lauding "moral disquiet" of scientist James Thomson, who is one of the leading researchers of embryonic stem cells and who led the Wisconsin team which announced the breakthrough last month (along with a separate Japanese team).

Well, Thomson had an op-ed piece of his own at the Washington Post yesterday, where he correctly trashes the Krauthammer column as the complete piece of s*** it is. He notes the Japanese team developed it's research independent of any decisions by Bush or his administration, and that teams in a number of other countries unaffected by US limitations are progressing far faster than US researchers are.

Thomson also notes the impossibility developing stem cells with the same properties of ESCs without first understanding what those properties are, a process the President's policies can only have hurt, not possibly helped.

In other words, this research has proceeded despite, not because of, Bush's "line in the sand", and in all likelihood has been hampered by those limitations, although we can never know for sure. If there had been more government funding for more stem cell lines, might this achivement have been reached three years ago?

Thomson (and his co-author Alan Leshner) conclude their piece by pointing out the uncertainty that their research will fully pan out, something we won't know for several years, minimum, and encourage Congress to override the President's veto of the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act. It won't happen - too many Republicans in Congress are more committed to supporting the President and furthering their own ideologies than they are to actually furthering a policy a considerable majority of their constituents support.

Maybe though, just maybe, the Thomson op-ed will help stop the wave of idiocy trying to allot some credit to the President for a breakthrough his policies did nothing to help, and much to hinder.