the big business of politics and science

Go read The Stem Cell Hustle by Dean Barnett at Hugh Hewitt. It's tough to find one key sentence to summarize, but here are some samples:

If you’re a medical researcher, you’re always competing for your share of charity dollars. The professional fund-raising class knows this. The pie of charitable giving (and taxpayer funding) isn’t particularly elastic. So a dollar that goes to AIDS treatment is a dollar that won’t be going to cancer research. It’s just the way it is. That’s why charities behave the way they do. They pursue big donors with the ardor of a high school nerd who’s smitten by the head cheerleader...

If stem cell research is no longer a political issue, stem cell champions of the moment like John Edwards will cease peddling pernicious lies like the one he offered about Christopher Reeve. And without credentialed cretins like John Edwards promising miracles, sufferers (and potential sufferers) of all sorts of diseases will have to deal with their reality instead of breathlessly awaiting a miracle that they believe is imminent but that is, at best, far away.