Monday, August 30, 2004

Via Jesse at Pandagon, I just saw this appalling story:

Police Confirm Pipe Bomb Blast at Stem-Cell Lab

An explosion that blew out a number of windows at a Boston-area laboratory specializing in stem-cell research was caused by a pipe bomb, local police said on Friday.

No one was wounded in Thursday's early morning blast at Watertown, Massachusetts-based Amaranth Bio, which says on its Web site its technology is focused on organ regeneration and that it is working on cures for diabetes and liver disorders....


Get used to this. I have a feeling you're going to see a lot of stories like this in the months and years -- hell, in the decades -- to come.

(Decades? Sure. How long have America's Wahhabis been fighting the teaching of evolution?)

Oh, this kind of thing is going to happen all the time. Once this research starts bearing fruit, elements of the Christian right are going to start demanding all sorts of roadblocks to its application: mandatory 24-hour waiting periods and misleading information presentations for stem-cell patients, denial of federal funding (Medicare, Medicaid) for stem-cell-derived treatments, "conscience" clauses so hospitals and doctors can refuse to offer such treaments ... plus, of course, more and more violence of this nature. Eventually the breakthroughs from stem-cell research will be freely available in every other developed country in the world, but not in a majority of the counties in the United States.

Yeah, I hope I'm overreacting. But I don't think I am.

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