Members of the House of Commons are today debating and voting upon a piece of legislation which will have a significant effect upon stem cell research into human disease.
A Member of Parliament in the Conservative interest, a Mr Edward Leigh proposed an amendment banning this research, and speaking in its support remarked that the creation of ‘admixed’ embryos is “ethically wrong and almost certainly medically useless, and if not useless, there is no evidence yet to substantiate it”.
Mr Leigh, there is no evidence to support any hypothesis until scientists carry out experiments which allow them to collect and analyse data.
Which your amendment would prevent us from doing. Unless, of course the Honourable Member for Gainsborough (whose history degree eminently qualifies him to speak on matters of stem-cell biology) is an Oracle: the Leigh Scientific Prognosticator.
The Leigh Scientific Prognosticator™ would be most useful in modern, expensive laboratories. One could propose a project: a large hadrosaur collider, a new drug, some frivolous DNA barcoding, a novel chemical process or an International Space Station and pass the proposal before the Leigh Scientific Prognosticator.
Knowing little of the field, but being Firm Of Opinion and having consulted the Catechism for guidance, the Prognosticator would lurch and snort into life, steam hissing from leaking gaskets and pronounce that there is no evidence yet to substantiate your research, therefore your research is unnecessary.
I seem to remember critics similar to the Leigh Scientific Prognosticator being a widespread phenomenon in 1858. There was no need for my and Wallace’s theory of natural selection, or any of the experimentation that went into it: it was adequately explained by Genesis.
(Googles hadrosaur. Discovers they are duck-billed)
Aha! That must be a device to investigate the fundamental particle, the quack.
Well it sounded like hadrosaur. I am 199.
Damn, Bob O’Hara beat me to it. I was going to say, “please, oh please tell me that ‘the large hadrosaur collider’ was unintentional”. And so it appears from Mr Darwin’s response that it was indeed unintentional, which has given me much to be mirthful about on a Monday afternoon, and much to photoshop on a Monday evening…
Also, I can’t help pointing out that “Firm Of Opinion” = “foo” = sounds an awful lot like “woo”.
If you were a Member for Gainsborough, you’d oppose hybrid embryos too.
shudders at childhood memories
I have Googled Gainsborough and seen that the town has benefitted from considerable hydrological studies to predict the effects of flooding by the River Trent, the name of which is derived for the Celtic for ‘trespasser’.
Substantial public funds and engineering went into preventing the town from flooding, for which I am delighted: the fens did a great deal to foster my enthusiasm for natural history.
Possibly the Leigh Scientific PrognosticatorTM would suggest that the hydrology and flood defences were unnecessary, and that the residents should lay in gopher wood and obtain plans for an Ark.
Mr Darwin – you are indeed mistaken. Although, given that your studies of the classics no doubt exceed our own, such a mistake is simple to make, given that the words hadrosaur and hadron share the same Greek root, meaning ‘heavy’. I venture that what you really meant was Large Sauropod Collider. This exists. I have seen it. Paul Sereno has one at the University of Chicago, this city being named from the local vernacular for ‘Place of the Wild Onions’. Just thought you should know that. I’m off now. Goodbye.
Or, as our friends in the prints would have it, “atom smasher”.
Smashing! Pass the ginger beer, Algy!
Sauropods are, actually, rather larger than atoms. Even when viewed from a long way off.
“Boffins use atom smasher to probe secrets of the Universe while looking through telescope the wrong way owing to overconsumption of booze”. Rather unweildy for a headline, I suppose. And there aren’t any dinosaurs in it.
By the way, don’t tell those Google people your new definition of FOO.
Especially as their gathering is somewhat diametrically the opposite from that of the approach epitomised by the Leigh Scientific Prognosticator™.
Strange that both a dinosaur and a sub atomic particle can be considered ‘heavy’. It suggests that things are relative. Someone should consider a theory on the matter.
I suspect that the Prognosticator is already in use at some prestigious journals and funding bodies.
It suggests that things are relative. Someone should consider a theory on the matter.
Generally or specially?
Patently both.