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Today there is news that scientists in the US and Japan have successfully created stem cells from regular human skin cells instead of relying on politically and ethically touchy embryos. In doing so they have accomplished a rare feat: they have managed to make everyone happy on all sides of the stem cell issue.

Personally it’s hard to see the ethical problem in using embryos to derive life-saving stem cells, especially if those embryos were destined for a dumpster in the back of a fertility clinic anyway. The “right to lifers” who object seem not to blink an eye at placing more importance on protecting a potential-but-unactualized human being than providing life-saving treatments to actual human beings who are desperately in need. So for me, this new discovery conjures a sigh of relief more than anything, knowing that these revolutionary treatments can now happen unimpeded.

For those on the other side of the issue, though, it must seem like a vindication. And you know what? They’re right, though perhaps not for the reasons they’d prefer.

Whatever anyone thinks of those who opposed embryonic stem cells, they were correct in insisting that we take a step back and ask ethical questions about revolutionary science. In that sense, they were vindicated because they forced the ethical discussion and ultimately the discovery of a stem cell solution that posed no ethical dilemmas to anyone.

The pace of technological change continues to accelerate at an exponential rate, leaving less and less time to ask–and more urgently, answer–fundamental moral questions about the technology we are unleashing.

Here are some examples of questions that must be answered in the next couple of decades, and some of them quite soon:

Some people find our slowness in facing these and other looming ethical questions so alarming that they have urged that we relinquish broad areas of technology lest we face destruction, the most famous example being Sun Microsystems founder Bill Joy’s seminal article in Wired magazine named “Why The Future Doesn’t Need Us.”

I think no such thing–the potential benefits of all these technologies vastly outweigh their risks, and in any case it’s impossible to put any technological genie back in its bottle. But it’s imperative that we ask these questions and come about these technologies in a way that is as safe, sane, and ethical as possible.

Score one for people who questioned the ethics of stem-cell technology–not because I agree with your stance about human embryos, but because you encouraged asking the right questions.

Finally, the Democrats are talking about what they will do if they come to power rather than what they won’t do. Sen. Clinton outlined the Democratic campaign agenda, called the American Dream Initiative, in a keynote speech for the Democratic Leadership Council. The key themes underlying the proposal are:

Every American should have the opportunity and responsibility to go to college and earn a degree, and to get the lifelong training they need.

Every worker should have the opportunity and responsibility to save for a secure retirement.

Every business should have the opportunity to grow and prosper in the strongest private economy on Earth, and the responsibility to equip workers with the same tools of success as management.

Every individual should have the opportunity and responsibility to start building wealth from day one, and the security and community that come from owning a home.

Every family should have the opportunity to afford health insurance for their children, and the responsibility to obtain it.

In order to expand opportunity for all Americans, we must demand a new ethic of responsibility from Washington: to put government’s priorities back in line with our values — and its books back in balance — by getting rid of wasteful corporate subsidies, unchecked bureaucracy, and narrow-interest loopholes; collecting taxes that are owed; clamping down on tens of billions of dollars in improper payments and no bid-contracts; and restoring commonsense budgeting principles like pay-as-you-go.

Proposals for obtaining these goals:

Education:

**Increase the number of college graduates by 1 million a year by 2015. Proposal includes $150 billion in block grants for states to ease sharply rising tuition costs, and will provide roughly $2000 per student.

**Simplify the tax code by consolidating various education tax breaks and credits into a single $3000 college tuition tax credit, which when combined with the state subsidy should make tuition nearly free at most typical four-year colleges.

**Make Pell grants available to part-time and adult education (25+ year old college) students.

Retirement

**Require every employer with more than 5 employees to provide a retirement plan (401k, etc.) that enrolls workers automatically, increases their contributions incrementally over time unless they opt out (many workers today don’t participate simply because they don’t know about the plan, or don’t know how to use it), and provides investment advice. Tax credits would be provided to employers to help them comply.

**Create a 50% match of up to $2000 per year match on retirement savings for working and middle-class families.

Economy/Jobs/Energy

**Create a smart energy policy that sets America on a road to eventual petroleum independence, which will further encourage the development of new jobs in blossoming industries like ethanol and wind power production.

**Create an energy fund that will provide research dollars to develop cutting edge energy efficient technologies, cellulosic ethanol (from plant waste), bio-diesel, plug-in hybrids and other high-mileage vehicles, etc. All of these areas are ripe for growth in the wake of high energy prices, and can create millions of new jobs and billions of dollars in exportable technology and industry.

Home Ownership

**Allow everyone who owns a home to claim the mortgage deduction even if they do not otherwise itemize deductions (as many working- and middle-class families do not).

**Create a $5000 down payment tax credit for families who need it.

**Increase FHA loan limit to 100% of an area’s median home price so that families in high-priced areas are not locked out of affordable FHA loans.

**Provide certain employers such as police, firefighters, teachers, etc. with a 50% tax credit for employee housing assistance programs, to better help these kinds of employees live in high-priced areas (an impossible feat for many of these essential workers in areas like New York and DC).

Healthcare

**Encourage the movement of records from paper to electronic form, with strict provisions in place to protect consumer privacy. This information-sharing would greatly increase efficiency and lower the cost of providing healthcare services.

**Allow small businesses to pool their workforces together to be able to negotiate for better and cheaper health insurance than individual small employers could obtain by themselves.

**Provide universal children’s health care by reauthorizing and increasing funds for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, and by providing incentives to employers to cover the dependents of employees in their health plans.

**Promote healthier living (thus preventing expensive future health problems) by taking junk food out of schools, and by providing resources to community-based programs that encourage exercise, nutrition, healthy living, and the like.

**Create a National Center for Cures that targets and coordinates research dollars for finding cures to diseases like cancer, AIDS, and Alzheimer’s.

**Encourage further development of stem cell research.

**Strengthen Medicare by allowing the US Department of Health and Human Services to negotiate lower prices on behalf of Medicare beneficiaries.

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Overall it is a good and ambitious plan, and focuses on proposals in which both liberals and moderates in the Democratic Party can agree. My only “nitpick” is that I would like to see this plan condensed down to a few essential points that can be used in sound bytes and commercials over and over again to hammer the points home, just like the Republicans’ 1994 Contract with America. Democrats should also be prepared to provide greater detail as to how these provisions will be paid for at the same time that we attempt to return to “pay as you go” budgets.

While Bush continues to support Israel’s heavyhanded tactics despite pleas by allies like Saudi Arabia to broker a cease-fire, the British appear to have grown some spine.

British Foreign Office Minister Kim Howells last night denounced Israel’s tactics and urged America to understand the heavy price being paid by innocent Lebanese civilians, placing Britain’s position at odds with the US. While Downing Street holds Hezbollah responsible for initiating the crisis and supports Israel’s right to defend itself against missiles, it had no quarrel with the Foreign Minister’s condemnation of Israel’s tactics.

‘The destruction of the infrastructure, the death of so many children and so many people: these have not been surgical strikes. If they are chasing Hizbollah, then go for Hizbollah. You don’t go for the entire Lebanese nation…I very much hope that the Americans understand what’s happening to Lebanon.’

We understand perfectly well what’s going on in Lebanon, Mr. Howells. We are unfortunately led by a war-mongering and hypocritical president who is quick to “preserve the human life” of embryos headed for a dumpster by vetoing life-saving stem cell research funding while turning a blind eye to the thousands of innocent people killed in places like Iraq and Lebanon.

In our government’s view, Mr. Howells, unfortunately some lives are worth more than others.

George Will’s column laments the increasing misfortune of Republicans in the Keystone State.

In the governor’s race, Democrat Ed Rendell hopes to defeat his Republican opponent Lynn Swann by exploiting what he considers to be the increasingly fragmented and incompatible nature of the Republican vote: the loyal base, the disappointed base that may not vote, and the moderates who are concluding there is no place for them in the GOP. This last group is disenchanted because of the GOP’s backwards positions on issues like stem cell research, creationism in schools, and gay rights.

Republican Senator Rick Santorum’s re-election campaign is also in serious trouble and he will probably lose his seat because of this same fracture in GOP politics. This erosion in support is part of a “sea change” in electoral politics that is seeing Democratic candidates successful in previously Republican strongholds.

The Democratic strategy in Pennsylvania is obviously a winning one and will hopefully spread outside the Commonwealth, especially with there already being 12 Democratic governors in “red” states.

As expected, Bush vetoed legislation to increase federal funding for stem cell research. While announcing the veto he surrounded himself with cooing children he said were “adopted” frozen embryos.

People aren’t going to be fooled. The word is out on the incredible potential of this research, and no number of children will provide enough political cover to overcome the impression that Bush and some Republicans are Luddites.

Bush did Democrats a big favor for November. Now they need to club opponents of the legislation hard and mercilessly. I mean, really..it’s a hard sell to convince people that they should let their or their loved ones’ Parkinsons or paralysis or organ damage go untreated because Republicans would rather that embryos be thrown away than used for research.

It is an unfortunate fact of life that politics and technology are often intertwined. While the scientific ideal may be that research and scientific breakthroughs should be allowed to occur unfettered by political considerations, the truth is that a lot of what is happening in the scientific community today is pushing up against the comfort zones of some religious conservatives, which immediately makes it a political issue.

Two widely known examples are stem cell research and cloning. Both of these technologies offer a huge amount of promise in curing problems that afflict the human condition, but some aspects of the technology currently rely on embryos. That puts the technology in the cross-hairs of the Religious Right, since in their view the use of embryos in such a manner is akin to murder. Never mind that the embryos being used were headed for a dumpster behind a fertility clinic anyway; they must think it better to stand on principle and let humanity suffer from ailments like paralysis or organ damage rather than use embryos that were destined for disposal anyway. Thankfully, most Americans don’t see the issue this way.

This is not all to say that emerging trends in science should not be subjected to an examination of its ethics. Writers and technologists like Ray Kurzweil predict an imminent acceleration of science in nanotechnology, biotechnology, and robotics that in just a few decades will fundamentally alter the very definition of what it means to be human. As described in his book, “The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology,” we are headed towards of a future of sentient computers, ever-lasting life, a clean environment, and a merging of humans with machines. Such a future is both exciting and frightening, but undoubtedly fraught with much ethical peril. Kurzweil himself admits that these emerging technologies could also be used to extinguish all life on the planet far more efficiently than anything available today.

The ethical question to ask, then, is what we should do with such dangerous technology–and whether its benefits outweigh its potential dangers. That’s a different question from asking whether the technology offends the religious sensibilities of some people, especially over as unanswerable a question as whether life begins at birth or at conception.

Bill Joy, the founder of Sun Microsystems, has nightmares about Kurzweil’s future, which caused him to write his seminal article in Wired titled “Why The Future Doesn’t Need Us.” He examined the probable end result of emerging technology and concluded that it is so dangerous that humanity should relinquish it:

These possibilities are all thus either undesirable or unachievable or both. The only realistic alternative I see is relinquishment: to limit development of the technologies that are too dangerous, by limiting our pursuit of certain kinds of knowledge…The new Pandora’s boxes of genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics are almost open, yet we seem hardly to have noticed. Ideas can’t be put back in a box; unlike uranium or plutonium, they don’t need to be mined and refined, and they can be freely copied. Once they are out, they are out. Churchill remarked, in a famous left-handed compliment, that the American people and their leaders “invariably do the right thing, after they have examined every other alternative.” In this case, however, we must act more presciently, as to do the right thing only at last may be to lose the chance to do it at all.

Relinquishment may or may not be a pipe dream–has humanity ever NOT researched a potential area of study? But at least Joy and people like him are asking the right questions: what are the implications of the technology for the human race and the planetary environment? Will the problems caused outweigh the potential benefits? Does the fact that industry rather than government will have control of these new technologies (unlike nuclear weapons) give greater cause for concern? Will we increase the divide between the “haves” and “have nots” because of the expense of adopting new technology?

Politicians are not competent to answer these questions, especially those driven by the religious beliefs of a few. They generally lack the background in philosophy, ethics, and technology required. Even if they attempt to control the technology’s development they are bound to fail and only end up harming their own constituencies. The only result of Bush’s ban on use of government funding on stem cell research using human embryos is that the United States is falling behind the curve compared to other nations who are continuing their research. Thankfully, privately funded efforts like the new Harvard Stem Cell Institute are filling some of the gap, but it is shameful that our government is not fully behind this important research.

The job of politicians is to understand the profound impact that new technology has on improving the economy and enhancing our standard of living, and to promote the education needed to maintain our technological edge in these fields. They should also implement safeguards against the known dangers of new technology, such as the FDA’s proposed regulation of nanotechnology materials. It is not their job to engage in grandstanding and adopt moral principles based on religious values not shared by all. Scientific communities like the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence are well aware of the ethical and philosophical implications of their work and are best suited to bringing the necessary experts together to devise ethical guidelines for other researchers to follow. A general consensus on the part of our citizens is also important–a solid majority of people approve of stem cell research, for example.

I’ll be writing about new advances in technology in this otherwise mostly-political blog, because I’m a strong believer in the power of technology to improve the human condition, the environment, and our economy. The rise of global competition makes it more important than ever that the US maintain its creative edge and scientific prowess. As such it is imperative that we understand what’s going on in scientific circles and pressure our politicians to facilitate rather than block these wonderful new technologies in a responsible manner, guarding the safety of humans and the environment with the minimum amount of regulation possible.