Even as debate and votes are launched this week on health care reform bills that will hurt “our capacity to innovate” and “develop new therapies”, the Obama Administration moved yesterday to make federal funds available for controversial experimentation that has thus far failed to generate any human therapies. Taxpayer money will now flow to support research using cell lines derived from the destruction of human embryos. The National Institutes of Health approved the first 13 stem cell lines on Wednesday, and several dozen more of these lines are nearing approval for use in federally funded experiments.
The Obama policy, announced last summer, supplanted President Bush’s decision to allow federal support only for research using stem cell lines derived prior to August 2001, which was designed to elimination incentives for taxpayer support of embryo destruction. The funding has long begged the question why, if this research is certain to yield breakthrough treatments in short order, private investment is so sparse. In a reflection that even government-subsidized entrepreneurs are turning to stem cells derived or developed without ethical controversy, California has just awarded 10 of its 14 major research grants to projects that will employ non-embryonic stem cell lines.
Moreover, none of the projects funded in October by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine uses the human cloning method to create embryos so as to harvest their stem cells. That route is probably the most controversial of all, but the deeper question is whether any research that purports to be on the brink of revolutionary treatments and cures should receive government funds as a matter of first resort.
In an era when legislation routinely exceeds 1,000 pages, the bill introduced by Sen. John Thune yesterday — at seven lines — doesn’t look like much. But looks can be deceptive. If adopted, those seven lines would guarantee the end of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), a critical first step toward putting federal finances, and the economy, back on the right track.
Under current law, TARP, which provided up to $700 billion to support troubled financial institutions, is scheduled to expire on December 31 of this year, but can be extended until October of next year if Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner call for an extension. Geithner hasn’t made any final decision yet, but all indications are that he will so request. The Thune bill, S. 2787, would take away this authority, ensuring that the program will end this year.
The Administration has argued that more time would be useful, giving them the flexibility to extend taxpayer support to troubled financial institutions (and auto manufacturers) if necessary. That’s not good enough. The economic crisis that led to the adoption of TARP is over. Rather than a necessary tool to avoid an systemic collapse of the financial system, TARP has become at best just another source of stimulus spending, and at worst a slush fund providing ready cash, with little or no accountability, to whatever industry or firm the Treasury Department
chooses to support.