At Last, Congressmen Dumb Enough to Believe William Hurlbut

I really believed that the 15 minutes were over. How wrong I was. Roscoe, Rick and Phil held an actual briefing for Congressional staff to discuss how to do embryonic stem cell research without harming embryos. Altered nuclear transfer, which we prefer to call Semantic Nuclear Transfer to signify that it is stupid nonsense, is going to be all the rage. And Bill, who seems to have acquired something approximating an academic title in Stanford's Neurosciences Institute, helped brief the crowd on the technique we have discussed on this blog ad nauseum:

Dr. William Hurlbut is a physician and a Consulting Professor in the Neuroscience Institute at Stanford. He is a member of the President's Council on Bioethics and the author of Altered Nuclear Transfer, one of the four proposals for a solution to our stem cell impasse discussed in the Council's White Paper. Altered Nuclear Transfer would employ the basic technology of nuclear transfer (SCNT) but with an alteration such that no embryo is created, yet pluripotent stem cells (the functional equivalent of embryonic stem cells) are produced. The scientific feasibility of this technique has been established in mouse models by stem cell biologist Rudolf Jaenisch at MIT. Recent advances in developmental biology suggest promising prospects for this approach and it has received wide support among leading moral philosophers and religious authorities.

Dr. Hurlbut is a strong proponent of legislation to fund these proposals and in a Senate hearing last July described them as providing "one small island of unity in a sea of controversy." At the briefing Dr. Hurlbut said, "Approaches, such as these, that open scientific progress while preserving the most fundamental moral principles, are in the best spirit of positive pluralism and would be a triumph for our nation as a whole."

I swear, this guy should run for office; with so many red states to choose from, surely someone needs a neoconservative willing to lie this blatantly about stem cell research.