In Other Political News

[faerieburst]

With the control of the Senate down to the absolute wire, hinging on Virginia, I thought I'd take a look around the country and see what some of the other things that people were voting on yesterday. Here's what I found:

Voted NO to medical marijuana/legalizing marijuana:Colorado, by 60% (they were actually voting to legalize it outright

Comments

[chiaspod]

I thought you weren't posting 'til you could ask those questions you promised so long ago.

I'm most intrigued by Arizona - voting to make English the official language and yet still holding out the hope for gay marriage.

Colorado's stance doesn't surprise me one bit - CO's been happily anti-gay for a long while now.

... what do you think is the federal mandate on stem cell research?

[faerieburst]

I wasn't, but then this was really, REALLY interesting (as opposed to most of the things that I haven't posted, which were only really interesting), so I caved. I have no will power

[chiaspod]

The mandate is, essentially, just against using *federal* dollars to fund embryonic stem cell research that uses stem cells outside the allowed lines of embryonic stem cells. There's no prohibition against embryonic stem cell research itself, and in fact private and foundation funding has increased to amounts much larger than the NIH would have provided.

[faerieburst]

"The mandate is, essentially, just against using *federal* dollars to fund embryonic stem cell research that uses stem cells outside the allowed lines of embryonic stem cells."

Yes my dear, hence the sentence "That was kind of huge in terms of federal funding being a major contributor to research going on in universities and such."

Also, I'm pretty sure that human cloning is not considered kosher yet by any faction.

While the private and foundation funding may have increased to larger than the NIH budget, that's almost 10 years of research time wasted while the private sector tried to ramp up and compensate.

No, I'm not saying this is the Republicans fault. Hi, 1995, all Democrat in the White House, all the time. I'm just happy that something OTHER than the private sector is making moves in the direction of allowing and funding such research.

What makes this cooler is that it was an amendment TO THEIR CONSTITUTION. That's HUGE. This was the first time that I am aware of that a state *protected stem cell research* in their

[escaaapefromla]

Yea - the conspiracy theorists are having a field day about that one

You ban all Federal funding (colleges etc.) get the votes from the RR. Meanwhile all your money hungry friends (big corps with the labs already built/big pharma) in the private sector STILL do stem cell research and get the patents/profits.

Interesting Win/Win for the politicians but it's nice to see people voting like this.

I'm still sad about Afirmative Action (I went to the U of M)

[dporowski]

I believe there's also a prohibition against carrying out this research in federally funded labs, regardless of whether or not the individual program is federally funded. So for instance, the UW would have to establish a completely separate facility, staff, and program to ensure there was 100% no cross-contamination. This is a touch prohibitive.

In short, "Sure, you can research that! In a totally physically distinct laboratory built without any use of federal funds... You have one, right? No? Aw... What a shame."

Can't find the specific language on it right now, though, so this is probably so high-level it's a view from orbit, let alone 50k feet.

[kowboy]

I believe you'll find it in the omnibus Public Health Service Act under Title IV Part H. I'm not sure if that's the one you want since it actually allows federal funding for human stem cell research but within certain parameters.