Political Science*

So I realize that there should be restrictions on science, but as Bush used his first veto and talked about this moral boundary that we can't cross with this newest bill on stem cell research, I just cringed. Frankly, I don't think any President should become the moral authority on everything, especially a President had torture in his prisons and more scandals in his administration lately than I can count. But suddenly the Religious Right has given him this authority. Yet, how about our moral obligation to be the leader in finding cures to Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, spinal cord injury, strokes, and more? I never try to look at any issue in strictly a utilitarian point of view but I don't believe that embryonic stem cells are life and I think the research that can be done with them has more possibilities than we could probably imagine. And I'm not just totting some party line or interest group line. There's a reason why this passed the Republican controlled House and Senate. Even uber conservative Senator Trent Lott from Mississippi voted for this.

For all those science kids who scoff at us studying political science or going into government, wake up to the fact that you can't completely seperate science from politics, for better and for worse. For better we have the power to grant you millions of dollars for research on ground breaking science; for worse we can cater to a narrow constituent base and withhold that funding. It's just a reality.

In the end, I think Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee summed it best. "Yesterday [he] compared Bush's position to those who opposed Columbus, locked up Galileo, and rejected anesthesia, electricity, vaccines and rail travel. Such attitudes 'in retrospect look foolish, look absolutely ridiculous,' said Specter." --Washington Post

*To give full credit, the title political science comes from segment that NBC Nightly News did on this issue.