More of an idle Sunday musing that a serious question. I’ve noted that nobody in my usual viewing areas has shot eye-arrows at George Will for one of his allegedly inconsistent embraces of science. To wit, this recent column where he actually agrees with a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision and wished the court had been more activist.
I suppose the cognitive dissonance here is more judicial than scientific.
The question before the court was whether apheresis of stem cells generated by blood marrow would fall under the National Organ Transplant Act, which was made law in 1984. If it did, compensation for those cell would not be possible. Marrow extracted from the traditional aspiration process qualifies as an organ, and compensating for organs is a felony. Since apheresis was not a medical technique in 1984, the court ruled that it did not fall under the terms of the law.
To close the circle, let’s examine what medical reaction there’s been to the column. All I could find was this response from the National Marrow Donor Program. And that focuses more on the reasons for not providing compensation for organ donors – mainly ensuring that nobody withholds health information that would disqualify their donations. But that’s more a question of psychology than biology.
In any event, the selective use or embrace of science in politics and policy is something to get used to, not to have one’s mind blown.
