Meghan, Clyne, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, has an edifying piece in the New York Post about President Obama’s announcement that the federal government will be funding embryonic stem cell research. Of particular interest, though, are the connections high-ranking Obama Administration science officials have with groups that stand to benefit handsomely from the new policy.
It is interesting how in cases such as this silence suddenly overtakes the usual troublemakers who incessantly whine about research funded by the pharmaceutical industry being tainted.
This week CMPI president Peter Pitts also touched upon this gross double-standard in his Op-Ed in The Journal of Life Sciences. Read that article here.
Here are the relevant excerpts from Meghan Clyne’s piece:
Problem is, the administration's preening about its own scientific purity just isn't justified.
Consider, for instance, Eric Lander and Harold Varmus - the co-chairmen of the President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology, which helps steer decisions on issues like the stem-cell matter.
Lander is a renowned stem-cell researcher at MIT, a world-class university that stands to get even more federal funding, thanks to Obama's stem-cell move. An MIT spokeswoman says the university takes conflict-of-interest precautions when its faculty serve in government positions - but added that it won't recuse itself from funding opportunities related to Obama's decision.
More of the public-relations legwork on the Obama stem-cell decision has been done by the advisory council's oth- er co-chairman, Harold Varmus.
What of Varmus? The president lauded him Monday as an example of the type of "outstanding scientists" who "will guide us in the years to come." He's a Nobel-prize winning scientist who now serves as president of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer 20Center.
And a spokeswoman says Sloane Kettering's Stem-Cell Research Facility didn't qualify for federal funds under the Bush policy, because it uses tissues that violate the Bush ethical guidelines. Now that Obama has reversed that policy, the federal funding floodgates are open.
According to its most recent IRS 990 form, the hospital is already pretty good at working the public-sector pump: For 2007, it reported $120 million in revenue from government grants. Documents show that in 2006, Varmus earned more than $250,000 worth of his salary for "fund-raising."
Read full Op-Ed here:
