Democrats ain’t the party of science, either

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Democrats ain’t the party of science, either

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009 | Science |

Bill Clinton doesn’t know what an embryo is, thinks you can have an “unfertilized embryo.”

Obama’s address was morally unserious in the extreme. It was populated, as his didactic discourses always are, with a forest of straw men. Such as his admonition that we must resist the “false choice between sound science and moral values.” Yet, exactly 2 minutes and 12 seconds later he went on to declare that he would never open the door to the “use of cloning for human reproduction.”

Does he not think that a cloned human would be of extraordinary scientific interest? And yet he banned it.

Is he so obtuse as not to see that he had just made a choice of ethics over science? . . . Obama did not even pretend to make the case why some practices are morally permissible and others not. . .

And from the WSJ’s Best of the Web:

The characterization of the stem-cell restrictions as a bow to “ideology” over science is inaccurate. The objections to the use of embryonic stem cells–agree with them or not–are ethical, not ideological, in character.

In any case, today, in an editorial on Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, the Times shows just how seriously it takes the commitment to science over ideology. The Times urges Salazar “not to forget the wolf”:

The Interior Department’s scientists say that wolf populations are healthy enough, and state protections strong enough, to take the animal off the endangered species list in Montana and Idaho. We do not share their confidence in the states. De-listing allows for some hunting, and hunters in both places are itching to start firing away. Mr. Salazar should be ready to restore protections the instant the long-term survival of the species seems at risk.

The Times’s view, then, is that science should trump ideology when the Times disagrees with the ideology, but ideology should trump science when the Times agrees with the ideology.

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