Reason magazine’s science editor Ronald Bailey agrees with Bill Frist that taxpayers should be forced to fund embryonic stem cell research. Bailey doesn’t even mention the constitutional and moral issues surrounding forcing taxpayers to subsidize something they believe involves the destruction of innocent life. In fact, Bailey only acknowledges that the issue is funding stem cell research only once in the article and then to claim that “Even setting aside the question of direct federal funding, the Bush Administration limits have chilled[privately-funded] research efforts.”

One could make the argument that, yes it is immoral to use tax monies to fund research but, given government funding of research, it is wrong for the government to pick and choose what types of research it will fund, or point to the stem cell argument as an example of how government involvement in research harms science. These positions are not perfect, but at least they are grounded in libertarian principle. But Bailey does not make those arguments, instead, by referring to a refusal to fund embryonic stem cell research a “ban” he implicitly accepts the premise that failure of the government to fund something is the equivalent of outlawing it.