Genetic research and the American edge

The UK just granted its first license for human cloning techniques to be used in a research experiment. Singapore is completing Biopolis, which is drawing in great scientific minds who are not free to cross certain lines in their home countries. By disallowing cloning and stem cell research, the US has lost precious ground in the great scientific race of our age, and it will only continue to lose more as we plant our heads firmly in the sand.

John Kerry has cherrypicked a pro-stem cell research stance, but as usual, he has declined to offer any substance to his opinion and seems content to try it out for its simple opposition to GWBII. As limpdicked as Kerry's position is, it's a start, at least. He'd do well to stump about how American ingenuity is being eroded by a latent Puritanical superstition. It would be nice if he'd talk about the economic potential of patents and job growth in a sector which will only boom for the forseeable future. He could nicely expand on his similarly vacuous health care position by talking about how the costs of diseases like diabetes and cancer could well be mitigated by genetic experimentation.

Will he do any of that? Of course not. We're lucky to have a major candidate who is even mouthing his support of stem cell research, or rather, I should say, we're lucky that GWBII is opposed to it, because that has stimulated the usual anti-Bush stance by the cypher that the Dems are running for the White House.