Think Tanks Wrap-up

WASHINGTON, Nov. 30 (UPI) -- The UPI Think Tank Wrap-Up is a daily digest covering brief opinion pieces, reactions to recent news events, and position statements released by various think tanks.

Reason Public Policy Institute

LOS ANGELES -- Calling Hippocrates! When it comes to human cloning, President Bush should remember: First, do no harm.

By Ronald Bailey

President George W. Bush wants to commit an immoral act -- in the name of morality. He wants to deny millions of sick Americans access to a potential medical technology that the National Academy of Sciences believes could some day cure many disabilities and prevent many premature deaths.

Surely, that can't be right. After all, George Bush is a moral man, a compassionate conservative. He wouldn't forbid people to seek cures for their ailments. But that's exactly what he and many members of Congress will do if they pass legislation that would criminalize research on therapeutic cloning.

This past Sunday, the Massachusetts-based biotechnology company Advanced Cell Technology announced that it had succeeded in creating cloned human embryos, with the aim of trying to produce stem cells that could be transplanted into patients. Researchers took skin cells from several patients, including Judson Somerville, a 40-year-old Texas man who injured his spinal cord in a cycling accident and is now paralyzed from his chest down. Using a technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), researchers removed the nuclei that contain Somerville's genetic material from his skin cells and injected them into enucleated human eggs. A few of those eggs then began dividing in petri dishes.

Although the eggs did not get very far along in this experiment, the idea is that some day doctors using such "therapeutic cloning" will be able to transform Somerville's skin cells into nerve cells. These nerve cells would be perfect transplants because they would be genetically identical to Somerville's other cells and thus would not be rejected by his immune system. The promise of therapeutic cloning is that the transplanted new nerve cells would knit up Somerville's broken spinal cord and he would walk again. The results of Advanced Cell's research were published in "E-Biomed: The Journal of Regenerative Medicine."

Last July, in an unprecedented misstep, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the draconian Human Cloning Prohibition Act, which would criminalize therapeutic cloning research by fining scientists and physicians up to $1 million and throwing them into prison for up to 10 years. This wicked bill is backed by an unholy alliance that joins conservatives such as Weekly Standard editor William Kristol with left-wing Luddite extremists such as Jeremy Rifkin. The alliance is now campaigning together to get the Senate to outlaw therapeutic cloning medical research. So far they have not made much headway in the Senate, but this week's news has ignited the debate again.

So why would Bush and many members of Congress oppose helping people like Judson Somerville to walk? After all, in August, President Bush showed that he understands the vast potential that human embryonic stem cell research offers to patients when he allowed federal funding to be used for studies employing 72 human embryonic stem cell lines.

In September, the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences' report, Stem Cells and the Future of Regenerative Medicine, concluded that somatic cell nuclear transfer research to create immunologically compatible stem cells like that done by Advanced Cell Technology should be "actively pursued." That's because, as the report concluded, stem-cell-based therapies could alleviate much of the suffering of the 58 million Americans who will be struck in their lifetimes with cardiovascular diseases, the 30 million who will come down the autoimmune diseases, the 16 million who endure diabetes, the 5.5 million who will lose their minds to Alzheimer's, and on and on.

Just as the medical revolution ushered in by vaccines and antibiotics vanquished many of the diseases that killed young people in the last century, stem cell therapies might conquer many of the diseases of old age in the 21st century.

Nevertheless, Bush has declared, "The use of embryos to clone is wrong. We should not as a society grow life to destroy it."

In saying that, Bush and other opponents are confusing cellular life with human life. They mistakenly argue that a microscopic ball of undifferentiated cells in a petri dish is as morally significant as Judson Somerville. They want to accord full moral standing to cells that, unlike Judson Somerville, have no brains, no thoughts, no hopes, no feelings, and no expectations.

Indeed, millions of these balls of cells produced by means of normal conception fail to implant in women's wombs every year and they simply cease to exist, unnoticed and unmourned, because most of us do in fact know that these human blastocysts are not the moral equivalent of human babies.

New medical technologies have often been opposed. For centuries, autopsies were prohibited as sinful. People rioted against smallpox vaccinations and opposed the pasteurization of milk. Many objected to heart transplants. In the field of reproductive medicine, condoms were banned as immoral, and contraceptive pills were illegal in several states until the late 1960s. Many of the same people who oppose therapeutic cloning, such as bioethicist and Bush adviser Leon Kass, who is also opposed in vitro fertilization, which since the 1970s has enabled tens of thousands of infertile couples to have families.

"We're sincerely trying to help our fellow human beings who are sick," explained Advanced Cell Technology's CEO, Michael West, on CNN's Crossfire earlier this week. "And we understand that these microscopic balls of cells have not formed a human being yet. And to not use them in compassionate way for our fellow human being is moral evil."

Let's hope that Bush and the Senate will not commit that moral evil by criminalizing this medical research.

(Ronald Bailey is Reason's science correspondent and the editor of "Earth Report 2000: Revisiting the True State of the Planet," McGraw-Hill.)

The Hudson Institute

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind.-- The Model State Emergency Health Powers Act

By Betsy McCaughey

President George W. Bush's executive order to try terrorists in military tribunals is getting a lot of attention. Some say the proposal would endanger the rights of the accused. Others defend it as a legitimate emergency measure. However, there is another proposal to respond to terrorism that would affect the rights of all of us, not just the accused. It is hardly being discussed, even though it could require each of us to roll up a sleeve and hold out our arm for a smallpox vaccination.

Each and every state in the Union is considering giving health officials broad new powers to vaccinate the public, quarantine the sick, and seize and ration medicines in the case of shortages.

Several state legislatures are already debating the bill in emergency sessions, and the rest are expected to consider it during their next regular session. Parts of the bill are reasonable, but other provisions could be dangerous to your health and your rights. Here is what the bill says:

Quarantine Laws

If a terrorist infected with smallpox were to board a bus carrying some fifty other passengers, some states would not even have the authority to isolate those passengers to prevent them from spreading the disease. This bill wisely attempts to correct that. It gives officials power to quarantine people without going to court first, although anyone who objected would be entitled to a court hearing within seventy-two hours. (Section 503.)

Quarantining those individuals at hospitals, however, would be a problem. Even large urban hospitals have only a few properly equipped isolation rooms to handle a disease as infectious as smallpox, and many hospitals have none. The bill would give state officials the authority to occupy virtually all private buildings, including warehouses, theatres, and hotels (and to compensate the owners of those buildings), in order to convert them into quarantine facilities. (Sections 402(a) and 805(a).)

Mandatory Vaccinations

The bill was drafted largely with smallpox in mind. In stronger language than in most current laws, the bill gives state governments the power "to compel a person to be vaccinated" unless it would be medically harmful to the individual. Refusing the vaccine would be a misdemeanor. (Section 504.)

If smallpox were diagnosed, health workers would compel people in the surrounding area to be vaccinated in order to contain the disease. The vaccine is effective even if given two to three days after exposure.

Effective, but also dangerous. Health and Human Services secretary Tommy Thompson pledged to order 300 million doses of the vaccine, enough for every American. But experts say that vaccinating every American is out of the question. The death rate from the vaccine "is considerably higher than with other vaccines," explains Lawrence Gostin, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center and the main author of the model bill.

There is a long history of Americans resisting vaccination. In 1902, Henning Jacobson refused to get a smallpox vaccine, in defiance of a Cambridge, Mass., health regulation. Henderson claimed it violated his constitutional liberties and his inherent right "to care for his own body and health." The Supreme Court ruled against him and in favor of compulsory vaccination, saying that "a community has a right to protect itself against an epidemic."

The law has changed considerably since then. For example, states require school-aged children to get shots protecting against diphtheria, tetanus, measles, mumps, rubella, and other diseases. But half the states allow parents to opt out of the vaccination requirement for just about any kind of philosophical reason.

Up to now, parents who vaccinate their children have raised virtually no objections against those who do not. The view has been, "so long as my children are vaccinated, why should I worry?" Gostin says that way of thinking does not work during an epidemic. Even after being vaccinated, people would still be at some risk because the vaccine failure rate is about 1 percent; they could be infected by a person who refused to be vaccinated. People with HIV or who take cancer and arthritis medications that reduce immunities cannot take the current smallpox vaccine. Their risk of contracting the disease would also increase as more people chose not to take it.

There is no philosophical loophole in this new bill. Should there be? Gostin says no. He supports a "narrow religious objection," but hastens to add, "only if (the objection) doesn't threaten the public's health." This issue will probably cause the most controversy as the bill comes up for debate. In an epidemic, do individuals have to give up certain rights in order to improve everyone's chance of survival?

The controversy could be resolved in the near future by a recent scientific breakthrough. The Food and Drug Administration is studying whether cidofovir (a medication approved for AIDS patients with certain eye infections) is effective against smallpox. If it is, it would be the first alternative to the vaccine for people infected with smallpox.

Rationing Medicines

What science alone cannot determine is who will get medicines that are in short supply. Both the federal government and some states maintain stockpiles of emergency medications. Health officials will decide who gets treated first with these government supplies. But what if there aren't enough? What if a health official tells you that you don't need one of these medications but you suspect that you do? Would you be able to go to your own doctor, ask for a prescription, and fill it at the drugstore? Not necessarily.

The bill under consideration says that, in the event of a drug shortage, officials could take control of the inventories of drug stores and other private sources and restrict anyone outside of the rationing system from buying or selling them. (Section 405(b).) Gostin claims that this provision serves two purposes: first, "in the case of a limited supply, [to ensure that] those who need it [will] get it," and second, "to discourage the unwise use and hoarding of antibiotics."

But he also concedes that "the public health system sometimes gets it wrong." Remember the mistakes made by health officials during the anthrax scare in Washington, D.C.? Health officials waited too long after discovering anthrax-laced mail in Congress to provide antibiotics to postal workers. Three died. The politicians got treated, but the postal workers had to wait.

Outlawing hoarding and profiteering is reasonable. But the bill should not prevent you from buying medications if you are worried that health officials are not acting quickly enough, or that your family is going to be near the end of the line at the health department with the mail handlers, instead of up in front with the families of congressmen and other "insiders."

That is one example of where the bill goes too far. In general, the bill takes emergency powers to an extreme. It provides that once a governor declares an emergency, any law that stands in the way of what public health officials want to do can be suspended. (Section 303(a)1.) That alone is a red flag warning us to read the bill carefully and enact only parts of it.

Nevertheless, state officials say they are working against time to get this legislation passed. "I am so afraid our moment of fame will be gone, and we will not have the enhanced capacity we need," said Mary Selecky, secretary of health in Washington state. That is certainly one risk. But these are complex issues. The bigger risk is rushing a bill through that could be dangerous to your health and your rights.

(Betsy McCaughey is an adjunct senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. Her 1994 article, "No Exit," about the Clinton health plan, received the National Magazine Award and the H.L. Mencken Award.)

Public Agenda

(Public Agenda is a nonpartisan, nonprofit public opinion research and education organization. Its mission is to help leaders better understand the public's point of view on major policy issues through in-depth analyses and opinion studies, and to help citizens better understand critical policy issues so they can make their own more informed and thoughtful decisions.)

NEW YORK -- Perspectives: Public Opinion Can Be Volatile in Wartime

By Public Agenda

Daniel Yankelovich, co-founder and chairman of Public Agenda, has been at the forefront of public-opinion research for years. He established the public opinion research firm of Yankelovich, Skelly and White, and later DYG Inc. He also founded The New York Times/Yankelovich Poll, which subsequently merged with the CBS Poll. Yankelovich, who co-founded Public Agenda with former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance in 1975, recently took part in a question and answer session to discuss the role of public opinion in the current war on terrorism.

Q: You suggest there are several stages in the way public opinion forms and solidifies. Where are we now with regard to public opinion on the war on terrorism?

A: The first stage -- opinion formation -- is when people's consciousness is raised and they develop a sense of urgency about an issue. Consciousness has been raised and a sense of urgency has been stimulated, so we're through that stage.

The second phase -- working through -- is more complicated. In it, people work through the issue, confront tradeoffs, and wrestle with conflicts and values. We're in the early part of that stage with respect to terrorism. On the one hand, we want to strike back, but we're finding it difficult to strike back. We don't want revenge, but we don't want to be perceived as wimps. We don't want to start a holy war but we want to make sure we can't be pushed around this way. We don't know the full magnitude of the threat. We haven't really wrestled with how much sacrifice we're willing to make.

In the final stage, you have resolution, where people have made up their minds, where people have made judgments with their heads and also their hearts.

Q: Are people's responses even more volatile because the terrorist attack took place in the United States, and because of the outbreak of anthrax?

A: Whoever decided to send anthrax to the media was very shrewd because that was a guarantee that it would be played up incessantly, and it's being played up and people have now raised the question of whether it has stimulated an overreaction. That sense of insecurity and nervousness about anthrax is extremely volatile.

I feel that the American people's response to this threat has been so praiseworthy. I think it's so admirable because there has not been hysteria. People are not bloodthirsty. They aren't running around putting pressure on the administration to nuke 'em or wage unlimited war. People are very thoughtful about the threat that comes from playing into Osama bin Laden's hands in making this a religious issue about Islam. And there's been a wonderful maturity and sense of judgment and discussion that helped to keep the administration from going off the deep end, and the administration helped the public from going off the deep end. It worked both ways.

Q: Are Americans hawks with regard to foreign policy, or do they at least lean in that direction?

A: The tendency on the part of the country is to be hawkish. Dovishness is not our first impulse. If things get painful enough, though, we begin to rethink that position.

Q: Are you surprised by the strong public support for anti-terrorism measures that might impinge on civil liberties?

A: No. I think the single most powerful political emotion is fear of disorder and instability. It transcends everything. These attacks are a threat to order. When you have threat to order and stability, the country will sacrifice. They'll try not to, and they'll try to minimize that sacrifice, but they will do it.

In this case, I think there'll be a lot more discussion about an identity card. My guess is we'll end up adopting an identity card. In the past, the identity card has been perceived as something that gives government too much intrusiveness into privacy. There will be a greater willingness to give up some aspects of privacy in the interest of greater security.

Q: People have been asked in surveys whether they are more suspicious of Arab Americans since the attack on the World Trade Center. Do people answer those questions honestly or are they afraid of how they'll be perceived?

A: People hesitate in a poll to have answers that are not socially acceptable. It's not that they're lying. It's a little self-deception and politeness.

Q: President Bush's approval ratings are at historically high levels. Is it reasonable to expect that he can sustain those high approval ratings?

A: They are at unnatural levels. They are at unsustainable levels, but that doesn't mean that there will be a big fall. If the president went from a 90 percent-type rating down as far as 60 to 65 percent, he'd still be doing extraordinarily well. He isn't necessarily going to fall to a low level unless he does something that undermines his credibility, which is what happened with the elder Bush on the economy.

It's almost inevitable we'll be going back to being partisan, probably in the next couple weeks. The economic stimulus bill in Congress is the first sign of real partisanship. Once you break through the partisan honeymoon, the ratings are going to go down. They're not going to be destroyed, but they're going to start moving to more natural levels.

Q: Trust in government fell after Watergate and Vietnam. But a recent ABC News/Washington Post survey found 64 percent saying they trust the government to do the right thing most of the time or just about always. Do you think this will hold steady, and are there any other signs that government is regaining the public's trust?

A: The high point was reached in the early 1960s where people felt 2-to-1 that you can trust the government to do the right thing most of the time. And then it reached its low point in the early to mid-1990s when it was 2-1 the other way. That's a total reversal over a period of 40 years. The level of trust began to climb back before Sept. 11, going from the 30s to the 40s. The recent jump up to the 60s is artificial and volatile. I think the trend has shifted toward increasing trust in government, but it's not going to go back to the old 2-1, at least not for years and years.

Q: In the 1980s, you pioneered a theory called "the mushiness index," a series of questions asked to determine how firm the public's position might be on a certain issue. Can you discuss the index and offer some ideas as to why it didn't catch on?

A: There's no way you can tell by looking at a poll finding whether it's firm or stable or whether it's unstable or volatile. You could have a very tiny error due to sampling, but you could also have a massive error due to a bad question or people giving a top-of-the-head answer without giving the matter very much thought.

For example, when the Clinton health care plan was first introduced, I examined some 17 different polls that came to an average of 71 percent in favor of the plan. In probing questions we did to determine how soft the support was, we came to the conclusion the 71 percent was really 30 to 35 percent. By the time the Clinton effort was voted down, it was clear to everyone that the public support had eroded. But that had really been clear from the very beginning because when you asked people, "Do you favor a universal health insurance for everybody as proposed by the Clinton health plan," more than 70 percent said, "Sure." But when you asked probing questions -- "Supposing you had to accept certain inconveniences or the cost to you went up," or "Supposing there was some compromise in the quality of care" -- as soon as people began to think about it that way, that's when the support plunged from majority to minority support. Millions of people, including Clinton, were misled by those sampling issues.

We felt we could ask a few simple questions in conjunction with the poll and then qualify our results or put an asterisk beside the number to indicate people should not take it at face value.

It was a little extra time and trouble to ask a few extra questions. But when some of the journalists started using the index, they found it was awkward to explain, and that it added a little to the expense, so they just never bothered. The trend at the time was to go toward quicker and cheaper and simpler polls and soundbite-type polls. This was going in the opposite direction. So it was a wonderful innovation but never used.

The fact it was brushed aside and never used was a great disappointment. It's a symptom of a state of mind. It's a clash of values between media values and polling values. In the clash of values, the media has won, and their values have prevailed.

Q: So where does the "mushiness index" fit in with regard to people's opinions of the war on terrorism and the anthrax outbreak at home?

A: On the terrorism stuff, everybody in the profession knows you don't want an instant question after some national disaster because there's an initial puff of fury, anger or despair, and the puff passes. So if you get a reading in an instant poll, it's "Nuke 'em." A couple days later there's a different response. It's notorious that grieving goes through many stages -- anger, despair, sadness -- and the country has been going through a shock and grieving response. So on a lot of the terrorism questions, the key is to not take the findings literally until the mood has settled in, which I think could take a matter of months. That said, I think you could surmise that some attitudes are going to be mushier than others.

The issue is: What will happen if there are a lot of body bags? It could be similar to Vietnam. At a certain point, people will raise legitimate questions about the strategy. Is this strategy the best strategy -- not the objective, but the strategy? The questions about strategy might also be raised without a lot of American body bags if, say, bombing were to go on through Ramadan, if there were mounting civilian casualties, if there were signs it was destabilizing Pakistan and feeding into Osama bin Laden's purpose of creating solidarity against us throughout the Muslim world. Then there would be questions about things there aren't questions about now.

Q: It seems as if there are a lot more surveys these days, particularly with the proliferation of cable. Is the public well served or less served by all these surveys?

A: Much less well-served. The notion that a poll is a poll is a poll, and it doesn't matter how cheap and simple-minded it is, is such a deterioration. It's Gresham's Law of junk driving out quality. They couldn't be more misleading.

Q: What would be your advice to people who are reading about surveys on the war on terrorism?

A: For readers, I'd say the single most useful thing to keep in mind is this notion of mushiness and volatility, that 75 percent may mean 75 percent, but it also may mean 25 percent.