In an article announcing the upcoming unveiling of the White House's Faith-Based Community Initiatives, the following bit of advice was included:

Preliminary recommendations from the new office of Faith-Based Community Initiatives have focused on presenting your ministry with a secular look and feel. For example, the White House recommendations suggest that if your program is called the St. Luke School; change the name to the Luke School.

Which of course begs the question: Why try to hide what your program really is if the White House is going to be supporting Faith-Based Community programs? I simply don't understand the point.  Since Faith-Based programs are going to be able to compete with secular programs for funds, is the goal to try and confuse those who distribute the money?  Or is it to try and confuse those who receive the services?

Whatever the reason, the White House's office of Faith-Based Community Initiatives is encouraging Faith-Based orgaizations to try and hide who they are - essentially, to present a front that is a best a misdirection and at worst a lie.  An interesting position for a White House office to take, given President Bush's pledge to return honour and integrity to the White House.

Monday, 30 September, 2002, 13:39 GMT 14:39 UK

Reagan lobbies for stem cell research
Former First Lady Nancy Reagan has been privately lobbying in favour of federal financing for embryonic stem cell research, according to US news reports.

Mrs Reagan is said to believe that the research could lead to a cure for Alzheimer's disease, which has afflicted her husband, former US President Ronald Reagan.

But the New York Times newspaper quoted a friend of Mrs Reagan as saying that she felt President George W Bush's controversial decision to restrict funding for the research was hampering efforts to cure Alzheimer's and other conditions.

Last year, President Bush restricted funding of research into embryonic stem cells so that only those cell lines in existence at the time of his decision could be used if the scientists wanted any governmental financing of their work.  Anti-abortion activists, who saw it as a move that could help restrict abortion rights in the future, were pleased.  Activists for the ill and disabled, who see a great deal of promise for therapies and cures in these stem cells, were rather angry.  Not much, however, has been said since shortly after the announcement was made.

Personally, I've always had an issue with the decision. No one was suggesting that women should abort fetuses so that their embryos could be used for research.  No one was even talking about embryos from abortions at all.  In fact, the only embryos anyone wanted to use were one that had been created for use in in-vitro fertilization procedures and, for all intents and purposes, had been abandoned at the infertility clinics for so long that they were scheduled to be disposed of.  These were not embryos that had any realistic chance of ever being implanted, growing and being born.  These embryos are considered really nothing more than trash.  Why then, is it so wrong to use them for research to help others live longer, fuller, more useful lives?

It would not have been difficult at all for the guidelines to have been written in such a way that it clearly restricted use of embryonic stem cells to only those embryos that have been in storage at a fertility clinic for a specified length of time, where the owners of the embryos either are no longer reachable or have given consent to have their embryo used as part of a research project and which are scheduled to be destroyed.  That would prevent anyone from deciding to have an abortion in order to donate the stem cels to research (a prospect I find lacking in credibility, but which has been floated on a few occasions), and ensures that only those embryos that have no viable future are used for research.

For people who believe that life begins at conception, I would think they'd rather have those small lives used to help save and/or improve life for people who are already here than have them thrown out as so much trash.  Would it not be better to have those tiny, embryonic lives have a meaning to them, even if they're never born as human? If the choice was between using an embryo or research or having it implanted and develop into a person, I could understand the position that they should not be used for research, but that's not the case in these situation.  The choice is between being used for research and being used for nothing at all.

Freedom To Tinker: Fritz's Hit List Archives

Senator Fritz Hollings has proposed a new bill to help combat piracy and copyright infringement. The bill, called the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act, has been criticized as being a bit too far-reaching and there are concerns that it could end up potentially regulating items that have nothing to do with copyrights at all. To help point out this font of potential stupidity, Prof. Edward W. Felten has started a new feature at his Freedom-to-Tinker blog called Fritz's Hit List. He will be listing different devices that would qualify as being "digital media devices" under the CBDTPA.

It's hard to know what to make of some of the new laws that are proprosed. Copyright in the age of the Internet and digital publications is going to be a tricky proposition, no matter how we go about it. What is needed, however, is to approach it with common sense, and a goal of balancing the interests of the copyright holders with the need for people to occasionally parts of copyrighted materials, such as has been allowed under the "Fair Use" provisions.