Matthew Yglesias » Speech FAIL

Feb 24th, 2009 at 10:11 pm

Speech FAIL

Everyone knows you can’t give a serious speech to a joint session of congress that doesn’t tackle the crucial issue of human-animal hybrids. President Bush showed how it was done in the 2006 SOTU:

A hopeful society has institutions of science and medicine that do not cut ethical corners and that recognize the matchless value of every life.

Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research: human cloning in all its forms; creating or implanting embryos for experiments; creating human-animal hybrids; and buying, selling or patenting human embryos.

That’s a speech! Economy, health care, education, blah blah blah who cares. I want my chimeras. Maybe we can hide from them in a base on the Moon.

Comments
22

22 Responses to “Speech FAIL”

Point Says:
February 24th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
Would you have been happy had the President (either one) urged Congress to act before an AI supercomputer on the internet declared war on humanity?
Dr. Moreau Says:
February 24th, 2009 at 10:17 pm
I am sure glad Bush is gone. I say that as a man of science.
Catherine Says:
February 24th, 2009 at 10:20 pm
How’d you like to be Bobby Jindal right now?

Or, any Republican for that matter.
Slutski Says:
February 24th, 2009 at 10:21 pm
I like snark. That is all.
End The Echo Says:
February 24th, 2009 at 10:22 pm
Isn’t an animal-different animal hybrid in the picture. Maybe Dubya just watched too much Dark Angel, especially season 2.
cd Says:
February 24th, 2009 at 10:31 pm
I;m sorry but Bobby Jindal is lame. sooo lame. And, not surprisingly, Ross Douthat is a bigtime Jindal fanboy.
scott Says:
February 24th, 2009 at 10:32 pm
He didn’t come out forcefully against our future robot overlords either…I wonder if some of the green investment money he talked about will end up with Skynet?
tao9 Says:
February 24th, 2009 at 10:51 pm
Bush is in the rear-view mirror. Why would MY pull out SOTO ‘06? Because snark covers fanboy doubt. Know that alot of folks are saying, “Klunk, WTF.” The politicos are saying (even soto-voce Dems), “Joe Biden’s gonna drop the hammer? Joe Biden? Did you say Joe Biden?

Can’t use poor W to grade that mess on a curve. This one was like Fantasia with the Kingfish as producer instead of Uncle Walt. The Kingfish could sell some “spread the wealth” BS; President Obama should catch him on tape, and practice for next week’s semi-SOTO re: the Dow @ 6000.
Don Williams Says:
February 24th, 2009 at 10:52 pm
I’m very disappointed that President Obama didn’t look the TV camera firmly in the eye and say:

“I would like to make one further promise to you tonight: Don Williams, your $40 DTV rebate is coming”

Could you work on that Matthew? Talk with Podesta.
blowback Says:
February 24th, 2009 at 11:01 pm
I don’t know about you but I find this particular human-animal hybrid quite scarey.
woot Says:
February 24th, 2009 at 11:23 pm
M-A-R-S. Mars, bitches.
mercurino Says:
February 24th, 2009 at 11:48 pm
technically, according to greek mythology, a chimera is not a human-animal hybrid, but a multi-species hybrid. a centaur would be a better choice to make your point. (/obnoxious pedantry)
Alan in SF Says:
February 25th, 2009 at 2:03 am
Just be glad Bush didn’t fulfill his pledge to go to Mars, or we’d have secret prisons there.
Richard Steven Hack Says:
February 25th, 2009 at 4:00 am
Aside from genetic research potential, chimeras or whatever you want to call them is one thing you’re NOT going to see. Utterly pointless phenomena except possibly for animal collectors and zoo attractions.

Neither are you going to see human clones, since again aside from the research potential there is ZERO value in cloning somebody and waiting twenty years for the payoff. Aside from the chimpanzee need to reproduce, of course, which explains why humans have kids with equally no payoff. Kids are basically toys for adults and evolution has selected for that behavior. Otherwise the species would die out. Otherwise having children has zero value.

I suppose there MIGHT just be some point in cloning yourself years before you might die of organ failure so you can harvest the clone’s healthier organs without fear of rejection, but that’s hardly going to be allowed since it implies murder. That’s also hardly going to be the only outcome of such research so it’s ridiculous to ban the research on the off chance some black market in organs might arise.

Now when you have the nanotech ability to totally REPLICATE an EXISTING human being in some reasonable time frame, then you’ve got something to watch out for. That’s a disruptive technology.

Again, however, there is very little likelihood that it will actually be used by anybody on a significant scale because, as a number of Star Trek fiction novels pointed out, this causes all sorts of problems for the originals and the copies.

Buying and selling embryos – I see no reason off the top of my head to oppose that. It’s hardly like selling people into slavery.

When people start talking medical or nanotech research ethics, I reach for my Glock.
duBois Says:
February 25th, 2009 at 7:58 am
That’s great. Well deserving of being in the 1st line of ridiculous-past-the-point-of-embarrassment things that Bush said and did.
dbomp Says:
February 25th, 2009 at 8:18 am
Does this mean we’re not going to Mars?
An Outhouse Says:
February 25th, 2009 at 8:58 am
What about human-vegetable hybrids? or is the barn door open on that one? I’m thinking switch grass.
Jason L. Says:
February 25th, 2009 at 9:04 am
For the general edification of your readership, I’d like to point out that “chimera” also has a technical definition, and that is an organism consisting of cells descending from multiple genetically-distinct zygotes. We’re all chimeras to some extent, as we have a few of our (gestational) mother’s cells floating around somewhere, I believe. There are more extreme cases of what would be fraternal twins fusing and then going on to produce an individual with some tissues with the genes of one would-be-twin and other tissues with the other would-be-twin’s genes.
Curtis Says:
February 25th, 2009 at 11:04 am
I remember at the time of that speech that some junior speechwriter just won a bet with his buddies that he could get the president to mention human-animal hybrids in the SOTU and spent the rest of the night walking around with no pants.
Sarah Says:
February 25th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
animal-human hybrids are a big deal, but (correct me if i’m wrong) this was the same speech that didn’t mention Katrina.
UofAZGrad Says:
February 26th, 2009 at 3:44 am
Jason L,

Excellent point. I, of course, know what you are saying is true because it was the plot twist in an episode of CSI where the murderer’s DNA from a mouth swab was not an exact match to the semen in the victim but indicated the suspect was a immediate relative. Of course, the suspect had like 7 brothers so the show provided several red herrings before Grissom realized the murderer’s dead fetus twin was skewing the results. As a side note, how can we have a general decline for the respect of science at the same time CSI is the most popular show on television.
Ben J Says:
February 26th, 2009 at 9:07 am
*YAWN* boring, old news. I think you posted this solely to get comment responses… feels a lot like digg right now.

Matt Yglesias

Speech FAIL

22 Responses to “Speech FAIL”

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