Are you a good scientist or a bad scientist?

The world of science can sometimes feel like being in the land of Oz. There are many wonders there, but there is also a good deal of silliness.

Just this week, there was the announcement that a research team had managed to get stem cells from a cloned monkey. The media have been simply beside themselves explaining how this is such a great advancement and will eventually lead to the kinds of miracle cures the Kerry-Edwards campaign promised four years ago and that Michael J. Fox and Christopher Reeve were spokesmen for.

As usual, the media are dead wrong about this bit of stem cell news, on several counts, as they have been in general on the issue of stem cell research.

The first thing to note is that, although there’s been an effort this week to say these stem cells did not raise issues of tissue rejection, in fact they do. There’s a disparity between the touted “promise” of universal cures from stem cells and the problem of tissue rejection. Cloned cells would not be rejected by a patient’s body if the clone is OF the patient being treated. But if, as is likely, cloning will be restricted, or rejected by a particular patient for moral reasons, then stem cells obtained this way will necessarily not be a complete match and will face all the hurdles of any modern tissue transplant.

Second, the method of cloning is grossly inefficient. It’s downright hit or miss, mostly miss. Cloning efforts have always required dozens or even hundreds of attempts to obtain even one viable clone. Politicization and government involvement in research, such as the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, have locked scant research dollars into this dubious method of procuring stem cells. Not only is it inefficient, but many people, myself included, believe it is highly unethical as the clones created are living beings, not just tissue samples.

Third, the stem cells obtained by this method are the type that is referred to as “pluripotent” — supposedly capable of turning into any kind of cell in the body. In real lab tests, however, these types of stem cells have always produced nothing except tumors.

So the monkey clone research has shown that it is indeed possible to obtain rejection-prone, tumor-producing stem cells from the wildly inefficient and unethical process of cloning.  This is considered good news in California, because it proves all those billions of dollars CIRM is parceling out may actually go to produce something useless. Before, by which I mean when politicians lied and sold California the CIRM proposition, nobody even knew if cloning could work and produce the miracle stem cells (that don’t actually work).

Meanwhile, real successes with adult stem cells, which work and can be obtained ethically from just about any body tissue without killing any clones or risking tissue rejection, go starving for lack of government funding.

In news of an actual scientific advancement that doesn’t involve flawed assumptions, wasted tax dollars and unethical research (what used to just be called science), Boston University researchers are getting close to a method that will allow a paralyzed man to talk.

The patient, who has been conscious but unable to speak for eight years since a car crash, has electrodes implanted in his brain. This allows him to interface with a computer that uses special speech software. Researchers are able to interpret the man’s brainwaves and believe they can interpret the sound he is imagining with about 80 percent accuracy.

In the next few weeks, their computer will begin the task of turning his thoughts into sounds.

There is a lot of good, cutting-edge science being done in this country. But whenever the government gets overly involved, as with stem cells and global warming, all you get is flimflam and wasted taxpayer money that could be spent on better things.

Kindergarten Sex — the Norway Debate

I try to comment only on current news events, but I missed this one last month, and it just about made my eyes pop out of my head and roll around on the floor, so it’s still worth a discussion.

In October, Pia Friis, leader of the popular Bjerkealleen Barnehage in Oslo and a well-known preschool educator, told the newspaper Dagbladet that children in kindergarten should be free to explore their sexuality during their time at day care centers.

She went on to say that children in the centers (who are generally between the ages of 1 and 6) should be allowed “to look at each other and examine each other’s bodies. They can play doctor, play mother and father, dance naked and masturbate.”

It’s not exactly fingerpainting and macaroni necklaces, is it? But even Friis apparently has some standards. She said, “But their sexuality must also be socialized, so they are not, for example, allowed to masturbate while sitting and eating. Nor can they be allowed to pressure other children into doing things they don’t want to.”

The issue is being addressed in professional magazines, and Friis has gained support from members of the psychological community. Family therapist Jesper Juul said, “Many are disturbed by children’s sexuality, but I think it’s important to put it on the agenda. That, in fact, is what we’re doing.”

These people are like Jocelyn Elders times 10. For those who may have forgotten, Elders was the surgeon general who thought masturbation should be taught in schools as a means of AIDS prevention.

Child psychologist Thore Langfeldt said, “Children must learn about sexuality, otherwise things can go very wrong. Children can’t object to something they don’t know about, and children can more easily and readily report assaults if they already are aware of their own sexuality.” So, translated, children won’t realize they’re being abused unless they’ve already been abused.

Far be it from me to dispute people with psychology degrees, but it seems to me the more you sexualize children, the more likely they’ll conclude in their young minds that they have no value as people and the less likely they’ll ever develop a loving relationship. Behind the babble, these educators and psychologists are talking about allowing institutional sexual abuse of children.

I’m going to get things thrown at me for this, but I have to pose the question: Is this the next step in schools? Liberals in this country like to pattern themselves after their elder cousins in Europe, and we’ve already begun introducing things into our public schools such as children’s books celebrating homosexual families and “tolerance” education that seeks to introduce even young children to forms of sexuality that in previous generations was considered outside the norm.

As a country, we need to give more serious consideration to what’s being snuck into schools under the guise of civil liberties, especially at a time when some elected officials (seemingly all Democrats) in Congress and in statehouses are kicking around the idea of mandatory universal preschool at the urging of activists such as Rob Reiner.