The long-running crusade by Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., against chimera research has some people tittering. Brownback attracted 20 co-sponsors (including one Democrat) for the Human-Animal Hybrid Prohibition Act, introduced Friday, which would ban the laboratory creation of “part-human, part-animal creatures” that “blur the line between species,” according to his Web site. “This legislation works to ensure that our society recognizes the dignity and sacredness of human life,” he said.
But among the reactions:
“As our nation suffers through the greatest economic decline in a generation and our country’s brightest minds are working tirelessly to reverse course, what does Sen. Brownback propose? Banning mermaids,” wrote Chris Harris of Media Matters.
And a Daily Kos posting is headlined “Mermaids, Centaurs, Minotaurs and Satyrs Against Brownback.”
President Obama made the difficult but correct decision today to lift restrictions on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. He acknowledged that “many thoughtful and decent people are conflicted about or strongly oppose this research,” but that a majority of Americans “from across the political spectrum” support it. Stem cell research, he noted, could “help us understand, and possibly cure, some of our most devastating diseases and conditions.” Obama also rejected the “false choice between sound science and moral values,” saying that “I believe we have been given the capacity and will to pursue this research — and the humanity and conscience to do so responsibly.”
The verdict is in. There is no connection between vaccines and autism. And it is time that all of us get our children vaccinated. In 2008, the United States had the highest measles rate in 10 years. An increasing number of parents have been refusing to vaccinate their children against measles because of this fear of a connection. It is not grounded in science. Major medical groups and government research are unanimous: The measles vaccine is safe, and you must get your children vaccinated, because if you don’t, you are endangering my children. You are endangering your neighbor’s children. You are endangering all of our children. This is serious stuff. Measles can be deadly. Parents, please don’t endanger all of our children based on a myth. Medical science has proved there is no link. — Campbell Brown, CNN
It would be a big mistake to take the recent U.S. Court of Claims opinion as the last word on whether vaccination can contribute to the development of regressive autism in some children. The U.S. Court of Claims special masters are hampered from considering evidence that has not yet been published in the medical literature regarding potential associations between vaccines and the development of regressive autism. There is inappropriate pharmaceutical industry influence on which vaccine studies do get published and widely cited in the medical literature. What is thought to be a scientific truth today can be proven false tomorrow. The answers will come when independent researchers, without ties to industry or government agencies concerned about protecting the status quo, can conduct appropriate scientific investigation into why many children who are healthy regress into autism after vaccination. — Barbara Loe Fisher, National Vaccine Information Center president
Kansas’ weakened economy received a big boost today, as the Department of Homeland Security reportedly is recommending Kansas as the site for a new $450 million biodefense laboratory. The lab, which will be located in Manhattan, is expected to have a $3.5 billion economic impact for the state. But with that amount of money at stake, expect the losing states to try to block the decision – just as Kansas did with the air-refueling tanker contract.
Some climate change deniers like to point out that sea ice actually is growing in Antarctica, so isn’t that a sign that climate change fears are overblown?
Actually, as this Slate piece explains, although Antarctic ice is spreading at the continent’s edges, this is misleading; the entire ice mass of Antarctica has been decreasing markedly, according to scientists. In the Arctic, meanwhile, despite a cold winter that led to slight increases in seasonal ice, the North Pole’s oldest ice mass continues to disappear at a rapid clip, according to NASA scientists.
“There are few things in American politics more irrationally ideological, more fanatically faith-based, than the accusation that Republicans are conducting a ‘war on science,’†wrote Michael Gerson of the Council on Foreign Relations. Gerson claims that this accusation is a political ploy aimed at shutting down debate. “Any practical concern about the content of government sex-education curricula is labeled ‘anti-science,’†he wrote. “Any ethical question about the destruction of human embryos to harvest their cells is dismissed as ‘theological’ and thus illegitimate.†No doubt this happens some, and the “war on science†rhetoric can be hyperbolic. On the other hand, there are plenty of scientists at the EPA and elsewhere who have complained about the Bush administration watering down or ignoring science for ideological purposes.
An update on the Bush administration’s war on science: More than half of Environmental Protection Agency scientists who responded to a recent survey said they experienced political interference in their work, reports the Los Angeles Times.
EPA scientists have complained bitterly about Bush administration flacks who repeatedly water down language on climate change or ignore toxic chemical findings that impose costs on industry.
The survey shows that the agency is “under siege from political pressures,†according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.
I haven’t seen “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” the anti-evolution film by Ben Stein. The mainstream reviews certainly haven’t been good. The New York Times critic described it as “a conspiracy-theory rant masquerading as investigative inquiry.” A number of reviewers said the movie doesn’t support its central premise: that all these academics are being persecuted because they question evolution or believe in intelligent design. There are a few people in the movie who claim they were persecuted but, according to the reviews, the film doesn’t present evidence of how widespread this is or whether what these people say is actually true. Were they really let go or denied tenure because of evolution, or were there other reasons? For example, the film suggests that one of these people lost his job at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History because of intellectual discrimination, but the Times reported that it “neglects to inform us that he was actually not an employee but rather an unpaid research associate who had completed his three-year term.” The film really goes off the rails, according to Time magazine, when it tries to link the theory of evolution to abortion and the Holocaust.
Have any of you bloggers seen the film? If so, what did you think?
Famed astrophysicist Stephen Hawking said this week that he thinks primitive life-forms might exist somewhere in our galaxy. But he believes that advanced, intelligent beings are rare in the universe. And he discounted reports of UFOs.
“We don’t appear to have been visited by aliens,†he said. “Why would they only appear to cranks and weirdos?â€
We assume he’s including Dennis Kucinich?
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the animal-rights group, has announced a $1 million prize for the first person who can create test-tube meat.
Parts is parts? PETA says that growing meat without real animals is more humane and environmentally friendly.
Still, I doubt if consumers will find the idea of lab-grown Frankennuggets appetizing.
But don’t scoff, says Slate writer William Saletan, who points out that scientists are already having success growing replacement organs such as livers and hearts.
“To put it crudely,†he writes, “if you can grow a hunk of flesh for transplant, you can grow it for food.â€
Are we on the verge of a Brave New World of food?
The Wichita region has opportunities to participate in all areas of the state’s bioscience effort, Tom Thornton, president and CEO of the Kansas Bioscience Authority, told The Eagle editorial board this week. That’s good to hear, given that the initiative has seemed mostly focused on northeast Kansas. But our region needs to be aggressive in seizing those opportunities.
The authority announced this week that it was helping fund an eminent scholar position at Wichita State University and Via Christi’s Orthopaedic Research Institute. The authority may also choose Wichita this year for a biomaterials center for innovation. And Thornton said Wichita could play a key part in bioenergy development and health care clinical trials. Wichita’s strength, Thornton said, is the collaboration between WSU researchers and “customers†such as aviation companies and the medical community.
It’s fine that Democratic candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will talk about “faith, values and other current issues†at Messiah College near Harrisburg, Pa., on April 13 — but so far they’ve declined invitations to take part in ScienceDebate 2008, a proposed election-year debate on science issues ranging from climate change and space travel to energy policy and America’s technological leadership.
These are complex, substantive issues that have received too little media attention in the election cycle but that will affect America’s future far more than Colombian trade policy or the candidates’ bowling scores.
The next best chance for a science debate appears to be in early May before the Oregon primary.To learn more about the effort, check the ScienceDebate 2008 Web site.
It’s official. A date and time have been set for a presidential science debate: April 18 at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, four days before the Pennsylvania primary.
Now it’s up to the candidates to agree to address a range of science and technology issues that are vital to the nation’s economic future.
For example, as debate organizer Shawn Otto points out, “Science and technology have driven 50 percent of our growth in GDP over the last 50 years, and yet by 2010, 90 percent of all scientists and engineers will live in Asia. That’s a huge fundamental change the next president is going to have to be dealing with, and yet nobody’s talking about it.â€
State Rep. Larry Powell, R-Garden City, has sent the book “Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years†to state legislators and Gov. Kathleen Sebelius in an effort to spread the word that global warming is no big deal.
The book, by S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery — well-known climate skeptics — discounts the role of human-generated greenhouse gases in climate change and suggests global warming is just a natural cycle of warming.
It’s fine for lawmakers to get opposing points of view, as long as they understand that the view Singer and Avery represent is decidedly in the minority among scientists and largely discredited.
They’d do better to read the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s landmark report (“Summary for policymakers†online at ipcc.ch). Or read Elizabeth Kolbert’s book “Field Notes From a Catastrophe.†Or check out the RealClimate site, run by respected climate scientists who have refuted the Singer and Avery book’s assertions point by point (they called it “Unstoppable Hot Airâ€).
With so much hard data and consensus science out there, why would lawmakers want to hang important policy decisions on this marginal book?
The group trying to organize a presidential science and techology debate (see my column in support of the idea) got a big boost this week with an endorsement by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, one of the world’s most prestigious science organizations.
Here’s hoping more support will follow to make the debate a reality.
Science and technology are at the heart of many of America’s challenges and controversies, from climate change and alternative energy to stem-cell research and teaching evolution.
Too often, though, science is pushed to the sidelines of presidential debates to make way for presumably weightier topics, such as whether Hillary Clinton is really likable or whether Dennis Kucinich saw a UFO.
My column today supports a bipartisan grassroots effort to hold a science and technology debate sometime during the election season.
I think it’s a great idea, and it’s fast gaining support. See the group’s Web site.
The Food and Drug Administration has declared meat and milk from cloned animals and their offspring to be “as safe as food we eat every day,†in the words of Stephen Sundloff, FDA’s food safety chief. The FDA believes that more study and mandatory labeling are unnecessary, even though Congress has been working on legislation to keep clones out of the food chain. So whenever the voluntary sales moratorium ends, will consumers have to just trust the FDA and industry that the cloned food they won’t realize their eating is safe? One problem is the context: The phrase “FDA-approved†seems more like a warning than an assurance these days.
It’s great that some Wichita schoolkids will get a chance to chat live with orbiting astronauts, thanks to a deal reached between Exploration Place and NASA.
The live video downlink from the International Space Station — the first ever for Kansas — will take place in February or March and let Anderson Elementary fifth-graders ask astronauts and cosmonauts questions for 20 minutes or so.
The event is a natural for Exploration Place to host, with its mission to fire children’s imaginations and inspire them to reach for the stars.
Kudos to Exploration Place for landing the NASA event. Hope it’s the first of many.
Texas’ longtime science curriculum adviser, Christine Comer, was ousted by Texas Board of Education officials last month for forwarding an e-mail about a talk by a professor who debunks “intelligent design†and creationism. The board members accused Comer of not being “neutral†in the evolution debate.
Why should she be?
As the New York Times argued, “Surely the agency should not remain neutral on the central struggle between science and religion in the public schools. It should take a stand in favor of evolution as a central theory in modern biology. Texas’ own education standards require the teaching of evolution.â€
Those standards are up for review next year, and intelligent design proponents on the board are expected to fight to insert ID views into the curriculum, another likely reason Comer was forced out.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
Paul Davies, a physicist and professor at Arizona State University, isn’t anti-evolution or pro-intelligent design. But he argues in a New York Times commentary that both religion and science are based on faith. In science’s case, he says, it “proceeds on the assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way†— an assumption he says that so far “has been justified.†For example, he argues that physicists “have faith that the universe is governed by dependable, immutable, absolute, universal, mathematical laws of an unspecified origin.†He contends that both “monotheistic religion and orthodox science fail to provide a complete account of physical existence,†and that “until science comes up with a testable theory of the laws of the universe, its claim to be free of faith is manifestly bogus.â€
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Kansans still convinced that public schools should teach creationism or the intelligent design theory should watch a two-hour NOVA program on KPTS, Channel 8, next Tuesday at 7 p.m.
The program is about the 2005 landmark case in which the Dover, Pa., school board was sued for ordering its science teachers to read a statement suggesting that intelligent design — an idea that life is too complicated to have evolved naturally — was a scientific alternative to evolution. District Judge John Jones ruled that intelligent design was a religious-based theory and couldn’t be taught in the science classroom.
NOVA producer Paula S. Apsell said that the case is instructive in that it “provided a crash course in modern evolutionary science†and “explored the very nature of science — how science is defined.â€
Click here to watch a YouTube trailer of the program.
Meanwhile, the Discovery Institute, which promotes intelligent design, contends that intelligent design is not religious based and that a teacher guidebook about the show distributed by NOVA violates the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Several scientists are claiming that they were misled about a new intelligent design film, the New York Times reported. Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins says that he was asked to be interviewed for a film about the intersection of faith and science to be titled "Crossroads." Instead, the film, which will be released next year, is now titled, "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," and is about academia’s alleged intolerance and suppression of those who see evidence of a supernatural intelligence in biological processes. "At no time was I given the slightest clue that these people were a creationist front," Dawkins said.
Eugenie C. Scott, a physical anthropologist who heads the National Center for Science Education, said she is willing to appear in films in which people’s views are different from hers. "I just expect people to be honest with me, and they weren’t," she said.
But a producer of the film denied that there was any deception about what the film was about, and said the film’s name change was just a marketing decision.
If the filmmakers were a bit deceptive, is that OK, given that Michael Moore does that? Or would that go against the religious views the film promotes?
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
A low point in our state’s education history is the subject of a new, re-edited documentary, “Kansas vs. Darwin,” that is debuting today at the Kansas International Film Festival in Overland Park. The film centers on the evolution hearings that the State Board of Education held in May 2005 and includes interviews with “the characters who captured the world’s attention.”
The filmmakers originally released the documentary a little more than a year ago, including discussions about cells and molecular biology that were over the heads of most viewers, the Lawrence Journal-World reported. So they re-edited the film, focusing more on the politics of faith and less on science.
That seems appropriate, as that’s what state board members did, too.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Ron Klataske, executive director of Audubon of Kansas, is the latest Kansan to claim he has proof of a mountain lion in Kansas. Critics were quick to point out flaws in Klataske’s evidence (a fuzzy photograph, plaster casts that could have been taken anywhere). But Klataske, a trained biologist, insists he has the goods.
Perhaps. It stands to reason that cougars are coming through Kansas, at least periodically, since there has been recorded proof of the big cats in all four states surrounding Kansas.
The larger question is: Are they staying here and reproducing?
Despite the many anecdotal sightings, there’s still no real proof that cougars have made Kansas home. But just knowing they could be here is exciting and makes our state seem a bit wilder.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
"Men want hot women, study confirms," reports CNN.
Another breakthrough for science!
Posted by Randy Scholfield
