[ExI] Private and government R&D [was Health care in the USA]

spike spike66 at att.net
Sun Jun 28 20:33:49 UTC 2009


...On Behalf Of Max More
...
	Subject: [ExI] Private and government R&D [was Health care in the
USA]
	
	
	spike wrote:
	

		The private money guys went straight for the bigger prize,
adult stem cell
		therapies.  These are starting to pay now.  We still haven't
any real
		promise from embryonic stem cells; they are too dangerous.
They want to
		become a baby, or failing that a huge tumor.


	Frank Tipler once recommended to me a book on why government support
of basic R&D was overall a bad idea...Max More, Ph.D.
	


Ja and this one is an extremely important example of that notion.  Embryonic
stem cell therapy is one which many people consider murder.  I disagree with
these, however I do recognize that the meme exists.  To use tax money to
pursue that line of research is taking people's money and using for that
which they consider immoral.  Those who argue that all military spending is
equivalent for some people miss a subtlety: those who disagree with military
spending benefit from it anyway: it prevents invasions.  Those who disagree
with embryonic stem cell therapy would be morally obligated to refuse it, so
their taxes pay for that which will not benefit that particular taxpayer.

With privately funded research, that whole problem goes away.  If one does
not believe in it, one does not buy stock in the company and refuses to use
the therapies.  Everyone wins.  One could (and should) extend the argument
to privately funding military research.

Note again that during the ban on government funding for embryonic stem cell
research, private companies were free to dump as much money into that as
they felt justifiable, but I never did hear of any of them doing that.  For
that matter I know of no governments that actually funded that line of
research.  Why?  The California state government said (to much fanfare) that
it was going to fund that research, but then didn't.  Why?

spike


 




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