Wednesday, May 14, 2003
Do we really need more efficient nuclear bombs?
Do we need stem cell medical breakthroughs that would make our present drugs seem as antiquated as horseless carriages?
I put these two issues in juxtaposition, as a way of looking at how Bush views, the well being of people on this planet.
What is a stem cell? Here is a short primer.
Embryonic stem cells, are special cells, which can form almost any type of human cell. Here's the revolutionary idea in its simplest terms: Today's medicine tries to support or treat injured tissues and organs. Stem cells might simply replace them. Rather than giving insulin to diabetics, we'd give them new cells to make insulin as needed.
To continue with the car engine metaphor, we would quit fixing leaky fuel-pump gaskets and simply install a brand new pump.
While most uses of stem cells are highly experimental, they are already used in cancer treatment. After tumors and the patient's bone marrow are both killed by anti-cancer drugs, blood stem cells are squirted into the marrow, where they get a long-term lease and make the whole variety of blood-cell types.
Researchers say stem cells are do-all wonders with astonishing potential for reversing heart disease , diabetes , stroke , spinal-cord injury , even Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases.
We are talking major, menacing diseases that kill and disable millions of people each year.
During his campaign, George W. Bush said he opposed federal financing of "experimentation on embryonic stem cells that require live human embryos to be discarded or destroyed."
Patients with terrible diseases and disabilities do not agree with Bush at all. . U.S. News & World Report quoted paralyzed actor Christopher Reeve as demanding, "Is it more ethical for a woman to donate unused embryos that will NEVER become human beings, or to let them be tossed away as garbage when they could help save thousands of lives?"
Many pro-life conservatives lobbied heavily with the Republican Party. They said, that taking stem cells from a fetus or embryo amounts to unethical exploitation of human life, and healing one life does not justify destroying another. They stated that they will make absolutely sure that no destructive stem cell research on embryos is done in this country,
80 Nobel prize-winners wrote the President to support stem cell research, but to no avail. Bush hung in there with his neo-conservative base for the most part. Bush did finally agreed to limit research to the existing 60 existing stem cell lines. There is a lot of confusion of where those 60 lines of cells were. He made it sound like they were readily available to researchers, but they are not.
Among those who recommended against any change in position, these sources said, were strategist Karl Rove, the top White House liaison to conservative Republicans.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now lets talk about the other issue I mentioned at the start of this article. More efficient nuclear bombs. I don't think we need a primer on what nuclear bombs can do.
The Bush administration is proposing to spend billions of dollars rebuilding the country's nuclear weapons manufacturing industry, resuming the production of nuclear components and materials halted after the end of the Cold War.
Proposals in President Bush's 2004 budget would refurbish virtually every facet of the nuclear weapons complex, ranging from the nuclear test site in Nevada to the Savannah River plant in South Carolina.
The president's budget includes $320 million to build new plutonium cores --
known as "pits" -- for nuclear warheads, $40 million of which would be used to design a plant capable of producing 500 such pits a year.
An additional $135 million would go to restart production of tritium, which has not been produced by the government for more than a decade, and more funds would be spent in coming years.
The tritium, a gas that dramatically increases the force of thermonuclear explosions, will be produced at a commercial reactor in Watts Bar, Tenn. an major breaching of a long-standing policy that kept weapons work at military facilities.
The budget also includes $25 million to increase the readiness at the Nevada Test Site, so that a nuclear test could be arranged in as little as 18 months, down from the current limit of three years.
Nuclear testing has been banned since 1992, and the Bush administration has said it has no plans to resume underground blasts. But some arms experts and congressional Democrats charge that the proposed spending seems aimed at a resumption of testing.
The Armed Services Strategic Forces subcommittee has also approved lifting the ban on low-yield weapons research. Low-yield nuclear weapons have warheads of less than five kilotons, or about a third of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in World War II. Combined with precision missiles, low-yield weapons could be used to hit a target without causing as much damage to surrounding areas as other nuclear weapons would.
"People don't realize that we're getting back into the nuclear bomb business in a big way, and it's a very expensive business," said Joseph Cirincione, director of the nonproliferation project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The treatment of these two issues, Stem cell research and better nukes. says a lot about this Bush administration.
George is going to make more efficient weapons to kill mankind and risk restarting a new arms race. George, is not going to support any major efforts to help heal mankind through embracing stem-cells research.
These are only two examples of Bush's approach to the world around us.
It is obvious that, history will not be kind to our President. I hope that the majority of us, will survive the Madness of King George.
Sources Cited:
San Francisco Chronicle
CNN
U.S. News & World Report
Joseph Cirincione, director of the nonproliferation project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Do we need stem cell medical breakthroughs that would make our present drugs seem as antiquated as horseless carriages?
I put these two issues in juxtaposition, as a way of looking at how Bush views, the well being of people on this planet.
What is a stem cell? Here is a short primer.
Embryonic stem cells, are special cells, which can form almost any type of human cell. Here's the revolutionary idea in its simplest terms: Today's medicine tries to support or treat injured tissues and organs. Stem cells might simply replace them. Rather than giving insulin to diabetics, we'd give them new cells to make insulin as needed.
To continue with the car engine metaphor, we would quit fixing leaky fuel-pump gaskets and simply install a brand new pump.
While most uses of stem cells are highly experimental, they are already used in cancer treatment. After tumors and the patient's bone marrow are both killed by anti-cancer drugs, blood stem cells are squirted into the marrow, where they get a long-term lease and make the whole variety of blood-cell types.
Researchers say stem cells are do-all wonders with astonishing potential for reversing heart disease , diabetes , stroke , spinal-cord injury , even Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases.
We are talking major, menacing diseases that kill and disable millions of people each year.
During his campaign, George W. Bush said he opposed federal financing of "experimentation on embryonic stem cells that require live human embryos to be discarded or destroyed."
Patients with terrible diseases and disabilities do not agree with Bush at all. . U.S. News & World Report quoted paralyzed actor Christopher Reeve as demanding, "Is it more ethical for a woman to donate unused embryos that will NEVER become human beings, or to let them be tossed away as garbage when they could help save thousands of lives?"
Many pro-life conservatives lobbied heavily with the Republican Party. They said, that taking stem cells from a fetus or embryo amounts to unethical exploitation of human life, and healing one life does not justify destroying another. They stated that they will make absolutely sure that no destructive stem cell research on embryos is done in this country,
80 Nobel prize-winners wrote the President to support stem cell research, but to no avail. Bush hung in there with his neo-conservative base for the most part. Bush did finally agreed to limit research to the existing 60 existing stem cell lines. There is a lot of confusion of where those 60 lines of cells were. He made it sound like they were readily available to researchers, but they are not.
Among those who recommended against any change in position, these sources said, were strategist Karl Rove, the top White House liaison to conservative Republicans.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now lets talk about the other issue I mentioned at the start of this article. More efficient nuclear bombs. I don't think we need a primer on what nuclear bombs can do.
The Bush administration is proposing to spend billions of dollars rebuilding the country's nuclear weapons manufacturing industry, resuming the production of nuclear components and materials halted after the end of the Cold War.
Proposals in President Bush's 2004 budget would refurbish virtually every facet of the nuclear weapons complex, ranging from the nuclear test site in Nevada to the Savannah River plant in South Carolina.
The president's budget includes $320 million to build new plutonium cores --
known as "pits" -- for nuclear warheads, $40 million of which would be used to design a plant capable of producing 500 such pits a year.
An additional $135 million would go to restart production of tritium, which has not been produced by the government for more than a decade, and more funds would be spent in coming years.
The tritium, a gas that dramatically increases the force of thermonuclear explosions, will be produced at a commercial reactor in Watts Bar, Tenn. an major breaching of a long-standing policy that kept weapons work at military facilities.
The budget also includes $25 million to increase the readiness at the Nevada Test Site, so that a nuclear test could be arranged in as little as 18 months, down from the current limit of three years.
Nuclear testing has been banned since 1992, and the Bush administration has said it has no plans to resume underground blasts. But some arms experts and congressional Democrats charge that the proposed spending seems aimed at a resumption of testing.
The Armed Services Strategic Forces subcommittee has also approved lifting the ban on low-yield weapons research. Low-yield nuclear weapons have warheads of less than five kilotons, or about a third of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in World War II. Combined with precision missiles, low-yield weapons could be used to hit a target without causing as much damage to surrounding areas as other nuclear weapons would.
"People don't realize that we're getting back into the nuclear bomb business in a big way, and it's a very expensive business," said Joseph Cirincione, director of the nonproliferation project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The treatment of these two issues, Stem cell research and better nukes. says a lot about this Bush administration.
George is going to make more efficient weapons to kill mankind and risk restarting a new arms race. George, is not going to support any major efforts to help heal mankind through embracing stem-cells research.
These are only two examples of Bush's approach to the world around us.
It is obvious that, history will not be kind to our President. I hope that the majority of us, will survive the Madness of King George.
Sources Cited:
San Francisco Chronicle
CNN
U.S. News & World Report
Joseph Cirincione, director of the nonproliferation project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
# posted by Thomas @ 11:16 PM 
