When you hear of the difficulties involved — of children dropped at libraries because there’s nowhere for home care, of people who could lose their job because they don’t have sick leave — these factors are really real, and we need to really feel that the public health benefit of that makes it warranted.

It remains to be seen where this will go, if it goes anywhere. But with every crisis being seen as an opportunity. . .

Federal officials declared a health emergency on Sunday, as they confirmed 20 cases of swine flu in five states, mobilized medicine stockpiles, and warned the public that the number and severity of incidences were likely to increase.

Mouse Embryonic Stem Cells

According to Michael Hiltzik in this March 30 piece from the Los Angeles Times, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine isn’t doing too well these days: 

The $6-billion [stem cell] program was enacted by voters in 2004 as Proposition 71 after a campaign of exceptional intellectual dishonesty, featuring vignettes of sufferers from diabetes, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other heartbreaking diseases for which it seemed to promise imminent cures through research into embryonic stem cells.

Sound familiar? Read on:

Proposition 71 endowed the program with what looked like an embarrassment of riches. The danger is that, without better oversight and broader debate about its policies and goals, it will become simply an embarrassment.

Which goes to prove:

Successful Emotional Appeal to Voters + Gobs of Government Cash + Lack of Rigorous Ethical Guidelines = Disaster.

You can read the entire article here.

HT: Center for Genetics and Society.