Virginia Postrel on the secular left's threat to scientific research

Criminalizing Science - Forbes.com:

"At a business conference this summer in Toronto Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class, told the Canadians again and again how wonderful they are--how open to new ideas, how tolerant, how diverse and therefore how potentially creative. Unlike the U.S., which is afflicted by divisiveness and the religious right, Canada is a model country. That was his story, at any rate.

"A few hours later I picked up a newspaper and got a different view. On the op-ed page a scientist was pleading for Canada to repeal its law against cloning human embryos for research. In tolerant, open-minded, diverse and creative Canada therapeutic cloning--defined as creating an in vitro embryo with the same chromosomes as any other individual--is a crime punishable by ten years in prison."

Wow! Federal law in the US only prevents federal money paying for such research - and even then has an exception for certain cultured cell lines already established.

Ms. Postrel does a great service by pointing out how the secular left in Europe and Canada is in important ways more hostile to genetic research than the religious USA.

I don't agree with Ms. Postrel on therapeutic cloning - or any procedure which destroys a viable embryo for research purposes, but the article covers more ground than that and I highly recommend it.