Interesting sidelight on Nobel prize recipient
Three Americans won the Nobel prize for Medicine the other day. (Cue U-S-A! U-S-A! chants). They received the award for discovering the existence and role an enzyme, telomerase, plays in repairing damaged DNA strands (actually something quite important for the future of medical treatments for genetic diseases and many cancers). Yet one of them, Elizabeth Blackburn, wasn’t good enough for our last President George Bush, because he fired her from the Federal government’s Council on Bioethics. Why? Because she didn’t toe the GOP line on stem cell research which made her persona non grata to the Bush and the Republican party’s faith based version of what science should be:
Blackburn spoke out about the Council of Bioethics, demonstrating that despite its written mission to be a body that monitors research developments and recommends appropriate guidelines, it was really just a tool for parroting the Bush Administration’s positions on certain hot-button issues — particularly embryonic stem cell research. Thus, Blackburn played a central and important role in revealing the extent of the political interference in science that pervaded the Bush Administration.
We, as a country are lucky that Elizabeth Blackburn, chose to immigrate to the united States from Australia (oh, that’s right, she’s an immigrant, as well, another Republican bugaboo)…
