Please don't be dismissive and shallow on hn. This is not Reddit.

I take his point to be substantive: if Americans continue to tolerate the religious right's war on science, we will continue to fall behind the rest of the world.

We're getting off track. America does a tremendous amount of the medical (and otherwise) science that helps progress modern medicine, and here we have a documented use of stem cells with an incredible outcome that is not encumbered at all with controversy. This is a win, no matter how calous you want to be about America. (New flash, religion affects the political climate all over the word.)

It is not a 'war on science' to oppose killing embryos for their cells any more than it is a war on science to oppose killing prisoners for their organs. Science can only answer the question of what will happen if one does one thing or another; religion/morality/philosophy must answer the question of what should happen, which implies what one ought to do.

Save for psychopaths, everyone applies some sort of moral calculus to his actions.

The religious right does comprise the largest portion of those who recognise the scientific fact that an embryo is a living human being and apply the moral principle that killing innocent human beings should be avoided (much as the religious right comprised the largest portion of those who recognised the scientific fact that blacks are human beings, and applied the moral principle that human beings ought not be enslaved, 150 years ago). It's not a war on science; it's applying moral principles to scientific facts.

This comment will be interesting to look back on in ten years if Trump wins.

We can be pretty bad here in Canada in fact my province has just made abortions legal here in this province this year 2016.

Technically abortions were legal for years but you had to leave the province drive two to four hours plus a $50 road toll, plus fuel, time off work etc.

I'm not female and never been in a situation needing one but I think it's about time it was allowed here.

So yeah the people here would probably be very vocal about stem cells at all still today. Any who knew of stem cell history would probably still assume they were fetal sources or just not care and protest anyway.

Haper is/was about as anti-science as they come, no matter his motivations for being so. Canada isn't some pancea of unencumbered science.

> Canada isn't some pancea

I did not say, nor did what I did say imply, it was.

What I replied to was putting an American debate forward as a global issue. What American policy makers do has very little to do with what research occurs in other parts of the world.

Once again, that I said the USA is deficient in one regard does not mean I am saying the rest of the world is better in every other, or even any other regard.