Kid-u-not Stories

Readers who learn of cases, laws, or regulations that they would like reported in this column are encouraged to e-mail Sigrid Fry-Revere at sfryrevere@cato.org.

Full version on SSRN https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/DisplayAbstractSearch.cfm

It is disturbing that so much of the debate surrounding the medical and legal definition of death is driven by a need to preserve medical resources and procure organs rather than by an honest scientific and philosophical inquiry about the meaning of life and death. This Article argues that the focus should be on finding a precise definition of death and how to determine it with certainty, and how to reduce medical costs and increase the organ supply for transplantation. Full version on SSRN https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/DisplayAbstractSearch.cfm

Full version on SSRN https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/DisplayAbstractSearch.cfm

Readers who learn of cases, laws, or regu- lations that they would like reported in this column are encouraged to e-mail Sigrid Fry-Revere at sfryrevere@cato.org.

Executive Summary The United States Congress and more than 28 state legislatures have considered spending billions of taxpayer dollars on stem cell research over the next several years. The National Institutes of Health has already committed billions. And in 2004, California voters approved the Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative, also known as the Proposition 71 bond measure, which authorized the state to raise $3 billion over 10 years to fund such research. Though debates rage over the ethics of research using human embryonic stem cells, a more fundamental question has been ignored in this debate: Is stem cell research a sensible expenditure of taxpayer dollars? This is not a question of whether the research should be conducted, but whether public funding for it is justified. Government programs, such as California's Proposition 71, are bureaucratic, wasteful, and mired in political controversy. And, because stem cell research is inherently speculative and politically controversial, the public would be best served if governments left it to the private sector. Each stem cell project is highly speculative, and it is not the place of government to gamble with taxpayers' money.