U.S. moves ahead only if science does

Wisconsin authorities are preparing to prosecute a couple who allegedly allowed their young daughter to die from juvenile diabetes, a treatable illness, because their religion forbids modern medicine.

While the tragedy raises thorny, uncomfortable questions about First Amendment religious freedoms, police had no choice. In 21st-century America, the law should intervene when antediluvian religious dogma causes harm to children.

CYNTHIA TUCKER
MY OPINION

• E-mail Tucker

Recent columns:

• Obama's next stop: Main St. 
• Gov. Palin, welcome to the club 
• No reason to fear detainees 
• Promote racial diversity fairly 
• Those who live in glass ... 
• Market won't fix Rx care 
• Follow the money in Rx debate 

Yet there was something eerily contemporary about the irrationality and contempt for science that allegedly led Dale and Leilani Neumann to watch 11-year-old Kara grow weaker and weaker until she died last year. Only a small patch of ground separates their dogmatic rigidity and distrust of empiricism from that shown by the administration of George W. Bush.

While the former president’s refusal to expand stem cell research cannot be proved to have caused any deaths, his narrow-mindedness did impede scientific efforts that might have made inroads toward a cure for the very illness that killed young Kara. In fact, Bush’s administration routinely hid, impeded or denied scientific data on subjects such as contraception and climate change.

With so much to celebrate about the inauguration of a history-making new president, it’s easy to overlook Barack Obama’s commitment to “restore science to its rightful place.” In practice, that means Obama is likely to reverse Bush’s stance on stem cell research. Like so much else about this new beginning, Obama’s embrace of science is cause for hope.

But the new president has his work cut out for him. Unlike so much mischief for which Bush was directly responsible — a misguided invasion, torture of detainees, mind-boggling debt, subversion of the Justice Department, etc. — the former president did not single-handedly turn us into a nation of superstitious ignoramuses. He was merely the chief cheerleader for a rejection of reason.

We have come a long way — down the wrong road — since John F. Kennedy inspired us to reach for the stars and grasp the moon. Like his predecessor Dwight D. Eisenhower, the young president was shocked that the Soviet Union beat the United States into space with its launch of Sputnik in 1957. Kennedy redoubled Eisenhower’s efforts, putting hundreds of millions of dollars into science and math, not just in universities and research institutions but also in high schools. Kennedy’s ambition was realized when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped onto lunar soil in July 1969.

In his formidable 1963 cultural critique, “Anti-Intellectualism in American Life,” Richard Hofstadter noted that Sputnik “brought an immense amount of attention to bear on the consequences of anti-intellectualism in the school system and in American life at large. Suddenly, the national distaste for intellect appeared to be not just a disgrace but a hazard to survival.”

Unfortunately, the nation’s newfound respect for scientific inquiry hasn’t lasted. In a 2007 GOP primary debate, three Republican presidential candidates raised their hands to reject evolution, and Texas is gearing up for another all-out battle over the teaching of creationism in public school.

Overall, only 40 percent of Americans accept Darwin’s theory, putting us just ahead of Turkey. By contrast, more than 70 percent of citizens in most other industrialized countries, from Norway to Spain to Japan, accept evolution as the foundation of modern biology.

Just as contempt for science threatened America’s survival in the days of the Cold War, so it does today. On a host of fronts — from ending our dependence on foreign oil to finding new industries to shore up our economy — the country needs to invest its resources in research. But it will be difficult for Obama to commit scarce funds to science if citizens don’t understand its importance.

At least we have a president who’ll lead us in the right direction, a man who believes in facts, data, evidence. But the rest of us have to follow. It’s hard to head to the moon if you’re leading a pack of flat-earthers.