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August 12, 2005
US science losing the edge - WSJ
You have heard it before: the US is becoming a less science-friendly place. Now the science columnist from the Wall Street Journal, Sharon Begley, has taken up the call, based on the Korean dog cloning in
U.S. Science Research Is in Danger of Losing Place on Cutting Edge:
The fact that Seoul has become Cloning and Stem Cell Central has ratcheted up a concern that has been growing for years: Is the U.S. losing its decades-long pre-eminence in science? And if so, does it matter?
The numbers suggest that the answer to the first question is yes.
The counter argument is that we can utilize science where ever it is produced:
That more smart people around the world are making more discoveries "portends well for the future of all humankind," Alan Leshner, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, argued in an editorial in Science.
"Do we have to trump the entire world?" he asked me rhetorically. "Probably not. That more papers are coming from outside the U.S. doesn't upset me nearly as much as the fact that cutting-edge scientists are leaving because they can't do research here" as a result of strict limits on human embryonic stem-cell studies.
Leshner is absolutely right. The problem is not that others are doing important work. The problem comes from our inability to capitalize on that research because we don't have the necessary skills still available in this country.
As Begley points out in her article:
Allowing a minority opinion to stifle research is only one symptom of politics undermining science. Some appointees to federal scientific advisory panels have been chosen for their ideology rather than their expertise; staffers with no research credentials alter the scientific (not only the policy) content of reports on climate change. Politicians' attacks on the science of evolution continue, even though "intelligent design" may make a fascinating lesson for a philosophy class, but is not biology.
Begley lays out the ultimate nightmare scenario:
An interesting battle will come when a lab in Singapore or Seoul or Britain uses embryonic stem cells to develop a therapy for diabetes or Parkinson's or heart disease. Its use in the U.S. would require approval by the Food and Drug Administration. Will opponents of stem-cell research demand that the FDA reject it and deprive patients of their only hope?
And they will we use our trade laws and other threats to bully other countries into adopting our standards on stem-cell based therapies?
It boggles the mind!
Posted by Ken Jarboe at August 12, 2005 1:01 PM
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