« | Main | Cultural Divide »
November 06, 2004
Prop 71
I'd say that one of the more bizarre election results is the passage of Proposition 71. Oh, on one level I'm not surprised that it passed, given the forces behind it, but on another level, given the perpetual financial crisis that Is California - I don't get it.
THE PASSAGE OF PROPOSITION 71 in California (the Stem Cell Research and Cures Act) was an acute case of electoral folly. As Californians plunged headlong into a $6 billion quagmire of debt in a quixotic quest for "miracle cures" from human cloning and embryonic stem cells, they simultaneously rejected Prop. 67, an initiative that would have added a modest tax to phone bills to keep the state's endangered emergency rooms and trauma centers from shutting down.THE PASSAGE OF PROPOSITION 71 in California (the Stem Cell Research and Cures Act) was an acute case of electoral folly. As Californians plunged headlong into a $6 billion quagmire of debt in a quixotic quest for "miracle cures" from human cloning and embryonic stem cells, they simultaneously rejected Prop. 67, an initiative that would have added a modest tax to phone bills to keep the state's endangered emergency rooms and trauma centers from shutting down.
...In a state the size of California, the only way to communicate effectively about politics is on television. That takes a lot of money. Proponents amassed a formidable fund that exceeded $25 million, paying for a load of television advertising. Heightening the effect was the usual pack of Hollywood celebrities, particularly Brad Pitt and the late Christopher Reeve (who taped a "Yes on 71" ad a week before he died), once again supported by patient advocacy groups.
Proponents were met in the public square by a coalition of strange bedfellows, religiously-based bioethics groups, fiscal conservatives, the Catholic church, pro-lifers, and some feminists and leftist environmentalists, who were able to amass a mere $400,000 campaign chest. And they were still in the game, until Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger--who had been the center of an intense political tug-of-war over his endorsement--shrugged off his fiscal sensibilities to endorse Prop. 71.
Posted by Amy Welborn | Permalink
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83451be0d69e200d83471867269e2
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Prop 71:
Comments
My take on Prop 71 was that it fulfilled the function of "liberal bait." The purpose of 71 was to draw secularists and lefties to the polls to strike a blow against the perceived forces of reaction and theocracy. I think it was a "feel good" vote, rather than a substantive policy choice.
Otherwise, the support for the proposition makes no sense. I strongly doubt that any substantial percentage of the California electorate had any idea about what the proper funding level for such research should be. Should it be $1 Billion? $8 Billion? Who knows?
One person I know said he voted for it because he votes for any proposition that advances science, which at least was some kind of rationale, but even he acknowledged that it was financially a bad idea. Most voters don't share that person's pronounced bias in favor of any scientific reasearch. So I suspect that the measure passed because (a) it was nebulously understood to promise miracles and (b) it allowed the voter to hand a defeat to the perceived forces of superstition.
But it was not a good day for thoughtful, deliberative democracy.
Posted by: Peter Sean Bradley at Nov 6, 2004 4:04:26 PM
I am among the strange bedfellows who opposed this unfortunate intersection of pork barrel politics and human experimentation.
Posted by: George at Nov 6, 2004 4:17:41 PM
If you read the campaign material for 71, you noticed that it promised magic cures for everything from hangnail to death itself. Golly, who could oppose the Universal Cure-all?? And it's "science" too!!
Could be that not all ignorant people live in the middle of the continent.
Posted by: Leo at Nov 6, 2004 4:28:08 PM
"Could be that not all ignorant people live in the middle of the continent."
Why is it ignorant to vote for the funding of science research? Personally, I think America doesn't spend a sufficient percent of GDP on basic research. Does that mean, automatically, that I am ignorant? If so, why?
Posted by: Lawrence Krubner at Nov 6, 2004 8:15:24 PM
It is hard to feel sympathy for the plight of Californians' in the midst of a fiscal crisis when they pass bills like that--and it hardly helps that the vote turned in favor of cannibalism.
Posted by: Chris at Nov 6, 2004 9:24:15 PM
It is to my shame as a Christian and a Californian that I did not do more to stop this. The moral arguments aside--and they should never be put aside--I thought the fiscal argument would be compelling to Californians who were already swimming in public debt. But it didn't work out that way.
Posted by: Peter Nixon at Nov 6, 2004 9:28:33 PM
71 passed, as Smith says in the article, because its supporters threw over 25 million dollars into it, and Ahnold supported it as well, despite the obvious financial arguments against it. The opponents of 71 had less than half a million bucks to spend against it. The only knowledge most people had of it was the disengenuous adverts with Michael J. Fox et. al. promising miracles.
Most people voting for it probably had no idea how much it cost. That kind of money for ANY sort of state-funded research is unprecendented in California and in any other state. The whole thing is disastrous. It is written to allow the cloning of embryos for the sake of destroying them in order to extract stem cells. Since they aren't trying to clone embryos in order to allow them to continue to grow in womb, its supporters have claimed that they won't be practicing "reproductive cloning," but it is cloning nonetheless. Add to that the fact that here will be no real oversight over what they do, and you have what is in the running for the worst change in state policy in the last ten years.
The whole thing is also an example of why direct democracy is a dumb idea. The Founders weren't stupid, and they set up a representative democracy for a reason. The initiative process, like many Progressive ideas in government, was originally intended to eliminate special interests. Just how ill-conceived this notion is can be seen in the passage of things like 71. Whatever interest has the most money has a good chance of winning these debates. The worst sort of rhetoric carries the day.
If there had been enough cash on the other side to get out the info on 71, it never would have passed--even in CA, people are against cloning of any kind, nevermind the cost to the taxpayers and the unseemly gains to wealthy biotech companies and venture capitalists would have put us over the top.
Posted by: kodiak at Nov 6, 2004 9:32:20 PM
The Founders rationally feared and loathed democracy--they were self-consciously fashioning a Republic run by landed gentry. They knew and said that with democracy it was only a matter of time before the mob was able to direct elections by demanding for itself the most possible goodies. 9/11 and gay marriage have postponed some of that on a national level for now.
Posted by: BA at Nov 6, 2004 11:53:20 PM
I'm a Catholic Californian. The Governor sold us out on many levels. He is incredibly popular but it is style over substance. The Hollywood crowd loved this smash and grab of our money, and he loves that crowd. (They did the same thing with a tobacco tax.) To have come out against it would have cost him some friends.
So instead it will cost us 6 billion to make biotech firms rich (who can take some of our money and use it for lobbying more give aways).
I get furious if I think about this sucker punch to my state and income.
I just wish I could have had a moment with all the Michael J. Foxes and Chris Reeves - why don't you donate your own offspring for research? Why aren't you using your own embryos to kill and dissect? You've got sperm and wives with eggs - why haven't you created your own stem cell lines? No one is stopping you.
Posted by: mark butterworth at Nov 7, 2004 12:12:53 AM
See the editorial in Friday's WSJ. California can't afford this. Not only are its ratings at junk-bond level, in any event does Big Pharma need more another gov't'l give-away?
Posted by: BoB at Nov 7, 2004 7:29:52 AM
Lawrence Grubner: "Why is it ignorant to vote for the funding of science research? Personally, I think America doesn't spend a sufficient percent of GDP on basic research. Does that mean, automatically, that I am ignorant? If so, why?"
If I read Leo correctly, he's talking about the science at issue in Prop 71, not science research in general. One of the things that drives me crazy is that in mainstream press coverage of this subject, embryonic stem cell research is rountinely lumped in with stem cell research in general. No one I know has a problem with research on adult stem cells or cord stem cells, it's the embryo-destroying research that is (rightly) opposed.
I agree with Leo, a lot of the wailing about the "ignorant fundamentalists" who drove Bush's reelection can be found in places like L.A., San Francisco etc. In fact, there's quite a bit of ignorance on the science of stem cells and it helped pass Prop 71. Sad.
Posted by: Cheryl at Nov 7, 2004 11:23:55 AM
Why did Proposition 71 pass? I am not sure. But I suspect that our secular faith in technological progress makes even the most "quixotic quest for 'miracle cures'" compelling, and our version of "the universal human desire to alleviate suffering" is so strong that it makes us willing to countenance even "junk biology."
If this is so, one part of an effective pro-life movement really must be a criticism of an uncritical faith in technological progress and the desire to alleviate suffering at any cost. One Christian thinker who might prove to be very helpful here is the late Canadian philosopher George Grant. I will quote from an article about him, written by Neil G. Robertson, from the conservative journal Modern Age:
"Grant was too honest not to recognize that technology had greatly liberated human beings from suffering and the slavery of work - especially women. He did not shrink from recognizing that the turn to modern technology was a response to suffering and that it was motivated by concerns for justice and charity. Indeed, Grant saw at the root of this turn a certain interpretation of the Gospels. Deep within Western Christian humanism was a call to end suffering and salvery.
"Nonetheless, for Grant, to live in the midst of technology is to live in the midst of deprival. The very way of being that liberates us from necessity and suffering brings with it a more profound suffering - the suffering of spiritual deprivation. We are liberated - but for what? Still more liberation? Grant argued that in the midst of the dynamic modernity of North American life, there had been an obscuring of the eternal, that order which 'we do not define and measure, but by which we are measured and defined.' Grant found the naively cheerful and pragmatic way in which North Americans found themselves at home in modernity both sweet and contemptible. North Americans seemed confident that they knew what the 'good life' consisted in, and they were simply trying to bring it about. He saw in all this a veil of illusions. He argued for the need to put aside all illusions and to recognize the darkness of North American modernity as darkness.
"The principal naivete he found in Borth American life was the supposition that technology could be 'got in hand' and made to serve human ends. From Grant's perspective, this belief betrayed a failure not so much of analysis as of perception: the only means North Americans had available to get technology in hand were themselves already technological. For Grant, the North Americans' blindness to their condition sprang from the pragmatic character bred into a civilization that had had to forge itself in a wilderness and as a result tended to see everywhere finite 'problems' to solve, a civilization that could not recognize a deeper fatality engulfing all its doings and all its reflections upon its doings."
Robertson describes further Grant's (and Simone Weil's) sense of the "obscuring of the eternal" caused by seeing everything as merely a "finite problem to solve":
"On the cross, Christ in the very midst not only of suffering but of affliction - suffering without purpose and experienced as the total abandonment of God - is yet able to give himself away in forgiveness to those who have afflicted him. For Grant, this moment penetrates to and reveals the most fundamental ontological mystery: that the world is love. In Christ, we are able to know the world as beautiful and so to affirm it, graciously free of the mastering willfulness of technology."
If we are to combat stem cell resolutions, perhaps inevitably based on faith in technological progress and its supposed capacity to alleviate any suffering, we really need to meditate on this freedom in Christ that is "graciously free of the mastering willfulness of technology." Otherwise, the battle might already be lost.
Thank you.
Neil
Posted by: Neil at Nov 7, 2004 3:58:50 PM
I think 71 passed because it was like a proposition that ran unopposed. I didn't see a single commercial opposing it. I heard nothing on the street opposing it. No editorials on the radio and certainly not in the L.A. Times. And there was a deafening silence from the Church, unless someone knows something I don't. It was a very strange thing to watch -- the celebrities were coming out the the woodwork and the governor was backing it and the was a huge campaign to make sure it passed, but there was just never a whimper about why it shouldn't. And yeah, we're broke and we can't pay our teachers and our roads are gridlocked and you can't breathe the air and it costs $45.00 to fill up your car and God help us if there's an earthquake any time soon... but hey boy, we don't trouble ourselves with issues of ethics (medical or otherwise) and we're gonna be on the cutting edge of junk science!
Posted by: Karen at Nov 7, 2004 10:00:41 PM
Interesting points, Neil.
I think that to do what you say, and put technology in its place, we need to also show its relation to truth.
Technology is merely a word for tools that we make, and ultimately these tools come from our use of what we find in nature. We need to show that technology only exists insofar as we know nature, and that this knowledge of nature is good and worthwhile in itself--it is good to know what is true. All truth is seen by the bad side of modernity to be good only insofar as it is used by man. This follows from the notion that man is the highest thing in the universe--if this is true, than he can do whatever he wants, the highest thing he can know is himself, and the highest thing he is is a being that can make and manipulate everything around him.
I totally agree with what you say about the acknowledging the freedom of Christ--this is ultimately the solution.
But in order to show that solution, we need to show people how a standard exists in nature and reason--a standard that is higher than us that we did not make. True cures to our fallen nature, true cures for our bodies, and all good medicine, comes from seeing the wondrous order in nature and working with it, not willfully destroying and manipulating it.
We need to show people that "science and technology" are not apolitical, and not absolute Lords over the rest of us non-experts.
The supporters of stem cell research never give a real argument for when life begins. They ought to be hammered on that in the public square--let them tell us their argument for when life begins, and then we can decide whether the research is good or bad.
Posted by: kodiak at Nov 7, 2004 10:26:13 PM
The commentary of Wesley Smith at its best is hysteria and histrionics. No where in Proposition 71 is the word embryo or embryonic mentioned. Accordingly, no one's moral ox is getting gored in this proposition.
The uninformed seem to be mystified and afraid of the word stem cell as though it is laden with some kind of moral cancer one ought avoid at any and all cost.
One would hope greater clarity on these issues would be forthcoming before the condemnatory opinions and editorials become common place.
Stem cell research can be carried out on non-embryonic stem cells and the promise to date is that such research is more than indicated. There is plenty of room for research on placental blood, placental tissues and adult stem cells that can done without encroaching on moral issues.
It would seem calmness of mind would be indicated until at the least the commenters
have sufficent knowledge to know whereof they can intelligently speak.
Posted by: ellen at Nov 8, 2004 12:00:15 AM
Saw Pat Cadell (uber-liberal) speak about this on TV this weekend. He was very angry "13 hospitals that serve the hispanic community in So Cal have been shut down, and the rich liberal elites vote for this thing, just for themselves.." Or some such thing. The bile was dripping, he needed a bucket.
There is much I disagree with Cadell on, but on this, even ignoring the religous dimension, he is right on.
Going in DEBT for this? What about schools, hospitals, etc..
Posted by: TK at Nov 8, 2004 8:25:32 AM
Um, Ellen.
No one is overreacting here. I suggest you check out Wesley's Smith earlier column in which he details at great length the pains Prop 71's authors took to hide its actual intent:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/768ybqga.asp
An excerpt: "Prop. 71 uses obfuscating language to mask its true intent: Although the measure is clearly created to fund experiments into cloning human embryos and research into embryonic stem cells, the word "embryo" does not appear anywhere in the text. Instead, the measure tellingly refers to embryos as mere "products." Nor is the term "embryonic stem cell research" used. Instead, Prop. 71 authorizes research into "pluripotent stem cells," which are defined as cells that "are capable of self-renewal, and have broad potential to differentiate into multiple adult cell types. Pluripotent stem cells may be derived from somatic cell nuclear transfer [e.g., cloning] or from surplus products of in vitro fertilization treatments when such products are donated under appropriate informed consent procedures. Meanwhile, knowing that the majority of people oppose human cloning for any reason, the authors pretend that the measure does not permit it, using the scientific term "somatic cell nuclear transfer" as if that were not a cloning technique. The "yes on 71" campaign even sued to prevent opponents from making the ballot argument that the measure concerned human cloning, even though the text of the measure actually uses the C-word to identify the identical biotechnological activity (somatic cell nuclear transfer) required for reproduction. The judge saw through the ruse, however, ruling correctly that somatic cell nuclear transfer is, indeed, cloning, and pointed out that this "is really the heart of the debate" over Prop. 71...Prop. 71's supporters make much of the fact that the measure would not fund reproductive cloning and that it would "initially" require that all embryo products (whether natural or cloned) used in the research be destroyed after 12 days (the modifier "initially" telegraphing that a broader license may be contemplated). But these restrictions actually mean little since the measure would pay billions for researchers to conduct the very experiments into somatic-cell nuclear transfer needed for human reproductive cloning to become a reality....Prop. 71 would also pay researchers to learn how to reliably create and maintain cloned embryos to the "blastocyst" stage when they can be harvested for stem cells. But the blastocyst stage is also when the cloned embryos could be implanted into a woman's womb. Thus, the information gained from spending California's borrowed money could be used by others to arrange for the birth of cloned babies..."
Worth reading the whole thing.
Posted by: Cheryl at Nov 8, 2004 9:07:53 AM
