I’m curious if anyone has any opinions on this. Please send me a direct twitter message if you know of anyone contemplating intervention. I’m curious why various interested parties, including States Attorney Generals, on behalf of state universities that benefit from funded research, are not seeking to intervene on this issue? Surely various universities, companies and foundations are affected just as much as Dr. James Shereley, the plaintiff in the case. Surely these groups could come together and file a common motion to intervene? What about interest groups related to various diseases that may be cured by means of human embryonic stem cells? I’m not a litigator, but it seems like a means to add some more color for the judge to consider.
This is my personal opinion, but I think the judge’s ruling in this case showed very little understanding of the real stakes, and suggest that he took plaintiff’s claims about the relative states of viability of Human embryonic stem cell (“hESC”) research versus adult stem cell research at their face value rather than allowing the case to be heard before making a preliminary ruling with disastrous results for many people, institutions and potential patients.
Motions to intervene in Federal Court fall under Federal Rules of Procedure Rule 24.
I suspect that the judge, in this case, would have been less free to make such an overreaching preliminary injunction accepting virtually all of the arguments of the plaintiff, had other interests aggressively intervened. I’ve wondered at the passiveness of the many communities that are potentially impacted by the ruling. Where are they? I know they are out there. But why are they so dependent upon this legislator or that President or this agency to represent their interests? Perhaps they are less accustomed to being activists in the interests of their fields of research or themselves than other very politicized and active interests? The best person to represent one’s interest is oneself. That’s the nature of democracy. Liberty doesn’t come free. There will always be people on another side of an issue, with passion. When both sides are represented, courts can better reach equitable results.
I worry that, to some degree, my sense of the Judge’s failing, may ultimately be due to the failing of the many parties in interest failing to represent themselves well and failing to develop vocabulary that represents what they do morally and equitably.
The pro-hESC research community has accepted the vocabulary of the interests that are opposed to hESC research, and many pro-hESC researchers, while more than adequate at this kind of debate when you hear them in the media, often still find themselves repeating the points of opposition advocates, without challenging the phrasing or the vocabulary of a certain question or presentation of what the research entails. The advocates need to work on articulating better, what it is they actually do, and not accepting an anti-stem cell vocabulary thrust upon them that creates a picture that is, from what my research tells me, a false picture. The media is guilty of this as well, often using the vocabulary of those opposed, to describe a process in a manner that is fundamentally inaccurate. Note that the New York Times has still not corrected the error in its article that embryonic stem cell research is now “illegal”, as referenced in my posting of a few days ago. How is that possible? It’s a major publication, posting a fundamentally wrong “fact” without correction. If the error were in the opposite direction, the anti-hESC crowd would have been on that in an instant, and the error would’ve already been corrected.
