U.S. Experts Bemoan Nation's Loss of Stature in the World of Science
By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 29, 2008
NEW YORK, May 28 -- Some of the nation's leading scientists, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's top science adviser, today sharply criticized the diminished role of science in the United States and the shortage of federal funding for research, even as science becomes increasingly important to combating problems such as climate change and the global food shortage.
Speaking at a science summit that opens this week's first World Science Festival, the expert panel of scientists, and audience members, agreed that the United States is losing stature because of a perceived high-level disdain for science. They cited U.S. officials and others questioning scientific evidence of climate change, the reluctance to federally fund stem cell research, and some U.S. officials casting doubt on evolution as examples that have damaged America's international standing.
"I think there's a loss of American power and prestige that came about as a result of our anti-science policies," said David Baltimore, a biologist and Nobel laureate and board chairman of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Raising questions about the science of evolution, he said, "leads to a certain disdain for American intelligence." He added, "What we need is leadership that respects science."
The panelists also expressed concern that science funding has not been a major issue for any of the presidential candidates. "The campaign so far has given too little attention to what science means for our own economy and our status in the world," said Harold Varmus, a Nobel laureate and president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
Nina Fedoroff, a plant molecular biologist who is Rice's science and technology adviser, said science in the United States "has really kind of died over a quarter of a century, even as the importance of science has grown."
Although the United States has long been the recognized global leader in science, Fedoroff said, that position is now being challenged by others, specifically China, which is raising its global profile. "They're educating 10 times as many students as we are," she said. "The next generation of scientists in other countries might not speak English."
Speaking about the global food crisis that has sparked unrest in some countries, Fedoroff said that genetically modified crops are one answer to shortages. But she said that "persistent misperceptions," particularly in Europe, about genetically modified foods has led to their underuse and even their prohibition as food aid in needy countries...
Now that's slipping a joker into the deck.
Sure, from the possible applications of alternative energy to stem cells to the observations linking atmospheric CO2 to global climate change to the education of kids about evolution or the real implications of physical theory to humanity's place in the world, science has been consistently suppressed by the corporate Faithful.
There's been a media blackout of facts that might upset the applecarts of the moneychangers.
But as someone who was trained in molecular biology during the time when people thought we'd really be able to use it to help the green revolution, let me say it's been used for nothing of the sort.
Techniques for genetic manipulation of food cost a lot of money to develop, and as a result only very rich- and powerful- corporations have done it.
While the initial vision was to make crops that were hardier, and grew faster, and would withstand the weather better, and were more nutritious, that's been the last priority of those who've funded the development of genetically manipulated food.
The main genetic manipulation is resistance to an artificial herbicide, glyphosate, a.k.a. Roundup. Oh, yes, and sterility in the plant, so that farmers are forced to buy all their seedcrop every year from Monsanto...
I can't imagine why people don't respect that.
As for respecting space science, well, it's really cool, it's really beautiful, I support it, and I agree, humanity won't be safe from species suicide until it establishes itself among the stars.
On the other hand, the head of NASA is CIA, and NASA itself has other priorites than space science, for all the relatively inexpensive Mars Rover show...
Like keeping track of the color of Ted Kennedy's pills today.
1 comment:
Damnation. That's so slick. By the time readers get to the end, they'll have forgotten that Federoff is a Bush Administration lackey, and just be thinking "scientist"
Who are we going to trust, Bush's scientists and the Monsanto-staffed FDA, or Europe? But the press doesn't write it in such a way that that question is likely to occur.
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