Yesterday President Obama made good on another campaign promise by signing an Executive Order reversing the ban on federal funding for stem cell research.
This is welcome news, not just to scientists who hope to do such research, but for the great majority of Americans who, according to opinion surveys, are in favor of greater flexibility in stem cell research. I'm with them.
I acknowledge that there is a small minority of Americans who consider this a moral issue. I'm sure they are sincere in their personal beliefs (emphasis on personal). There's also a small group of politicians who will claim to believe it's a moral issue. They're mostly not sincere, though they hope to curry favor with the first group. Religion and science are at opposite ends of the same spectrum, but they have something in common: there are few absolutes in either. Just as I do not expect our government in the U.S. to enact a universal ban on beef to pander to a small percentage of Hindu and PETA voters, neither do I expect it to impose a ban on the pursuit of knowledge to please some other group. (Even if that group were a large minority, it would be wrong -- morally wrong.)
Let's get back to science. The United States was founded in an age and a philosophy of enlightenment. We still look back to Ben Franklin and his kite with admiration. We have excelled in the application of new discoveries, new technology, and when we have allowed ourselves to neglect that pursuit (as in space research in the 1950s, or automotive emissions technology in the 1980s) we have ultimately had to play catch-up. We're at another such stage now, not due to mere laxity, but to conscious decision. What has happened to us? In the past decade, our government has not only closed off a promising avenue of research, but has also censored or bowdlerized science reporting on carbon emissions and the effects of sugar in the diet, and suborned our education system by permitting the teaching of "creationism."
It's high time that we put science and knowledge back at center stage. Yesterday's Executive Order may not mean that stem cell research ever produces a cure for anything; it does not necessarily even augur a huge new investment of funds in such research. Its true significance is simply in restoring a firm basis for science to bring us its advances.
Comments