Three Americans won the Nobel prize for Medicine the other day. (Cue U-S-A! U-S-A! chants). They recieved the award for discovering the existence and role an enzyme, telomerase, plays in repairing damaged DNA strands (actually something quite important for the future of medical treatments for genetic diseases and many cancers). Yet one of them, Elizabeth Blackburn, wasn’t good enough for our last President George Bush, because he fired her from the Federal government’s Council on Bioethics. Why? Because she didn’t toe the GOP line on stem cell research which made her persona non grata to the Bush and the Republican party’s faith based version of what science should be:
Blackburn spoke out about the Council of Bioethics, demonstrating that despite its written mission to be a body that monitors research developments and recommends appropriate guidelines, it was really just a tool for parroting the Bush Administration’s positions on certain hot-button issues — particularly embryonic stem cell research. Thus, Blackburn played a central and important role in revealing the extent of the political interference in science that pervaded the Bush Administration.
We, as a country are lucky that Elizabeth Blackburn, chose to immigrate to the united States from Australia (oh, that’s right, she’s an immigrant, as well, another Republican bugaboo). I wish we could say the same about our politics at the moment. Consider this an object lesson in all that is wrong with the Republican Party’s embrace of the extreme tight wing. The rest of the world sees Elizabeth Blackburn as a dedicated, influential and significant scientific researcher. Republicans? Too many of them probably applauded George Bush when he kicked her to the curb. When you put your politics before advancing education, especially science education, you set your country up for a gigantic fall.
The last eight years before this one are proof of that fact. Only in America do politicians and PR hacks masquerading as “climate experts” make headlines by proclaiming global warming is a fraud and a hoax by a conspiracy of environmentalist wackos. Only in America is “intelligent design” given any credibility as a “scientific theory on par with the theory of evolution. Only in America do we have a “Creationist Museum.” Only in America do we fire potential Nobel Prize winning scientists for saying that political calculations shouldn’t drive policy decisions on scientific research, as Elizabeth Blackburn noted:
When prominent scientists must fear that descriptions of their research will be misrepresented and misused by their government to advance political ends, something is deeply wrong. Leading scientists are routinely called on to volunteer their expertise to the government, through study sections of the National Institutes of Health and advisory panels of the National Academy of Sciences and as advisers to departments ranging from health and human services to defense. It has been the unspoken attitude of the scientific community that it is our duty to serve our government in this manner, independent of our personal political affiliations and those of the administration in effect at the time. But something has changed. The healthy skepticism of scientists has turned to cynicism. There is a growing sense that scientific research — which, after all, is defined by the quest for truth — is being manipulated for political ends. There is evidence that such manipulation is being achieved through the stacking of the membership of advisory bodies and through the delay and misrepresentation of their reports. As a naturalized citizen of the United States, I have an immigrant’s love for my country. But our country must not fail us. Scientific advice should and must be protected from the influence of politics. Will the President’s Council on Bioethics be up to that challenge?
And the sad fact is that only in America has this resulted in our children falling behind much of the rest of the developed world in math and science skills, skills critical for the future of our nation in the 21st Century. So congratulations to you, right wing nuts and tea baggers and Glenn Beck followers, who bitch about all the “junk science” being shoved down your throats by folks like Elizabeth Blackburn, and James Hansen. Who worry that swine flu vaccinations are a part of a conspiracy by the Antichrist President Obama to contaminate your precious bodily fluids.
You’d have thought we would have learned something from the propaganda and lies spread by the tobacco companies years ago that the science was wrong about the connection between cancer and smoking. But, it seems ever since Ronald Reagan assumed power in 1981, the dumbing down of the American public has accelerated at an ever faster pace. Certainly since Fox News established itself as the house organ for conservatives and radical fringe extremists, we’ve seen that element of our population that is fervently anti-intellectual, anti-science and pro- Fundamentalist Christian achieve a prominence in our political discourse far in excess of their actual numbers.
No wonder the rest of the world thinks American is becoming a dangerous, ignorant, barbaric society. They have good reasons for such beliefs.
