One Step Forward, One Step Back

Today, President Obama took a significant step towards rectifying the sins of the Bush administration's science policy, by reversing a blanket ban on embryonic stem cell research.  Stem cell research has long been at the forefront of the battle between faith and science, and the Bush presidency's stance on the subject was perfectly emblematic of it's response to scientific progress in general: 'not on our watch'.  Any aspect of scientific research that either cut against policy or offended the fundamentalist christian right was denounced or denied.  Climate data was suppressed, environmental mandates were ignored, and across the spectrum, information was massaged and mangled until it supported political decisions which had no true basis in scientific fact.  It was a very bleak eight years, a veritable dark age of the American scientific spirit.  And now, supposedly, a new day has dawned.

The importance of the stem cell reversal should not be underplayed; it is an enormous move in the right direction, at least in one particular field, and possibly for the scientific community overall.  The argument against embryonic stem cell research is reactionary and  superstitious at best, and because of our government's willingness to cave into fundamentalism, the true and daily suffering of individuals was prolonged unnecessarily.  We're effectively eight years behind where we should be as a logical and rational nation, and we must not forget that this course of action has been physically and mentally detrimental to many of our citizens.  Stem cell science isn't a magical fix of course, but the regenerative potential of the cells is also difficult to overestimate.  Who can say what we'd be capable of today, had Bush not chosen the cowardly and illogical route?   

By officially reversing course today, Obama is beginning to fulfill what, to me at least, was the most interesting and important promise of his inaugural speech, the returning of science to its proper stature within the American government.  That single line spoke directly to those of us dissatisfied, outraged really, by years of willful ignorance by both a government and its people.  It let us know that a veritable renaissance was at hand, not just for those who practice the sciences, but also for those, such as my self, who simply appreciate the continual cause of human enlightenment.  Today's executive order goes some distance towards reassuring me that Obama was serious in his commitment.  And yet, at the same time, I'm given pause by other actions of the administration.

In almost the same breath as the stem cell decision, Obama's Secretary of the Interior struck a blow against the environment by upholding a Bush-era policy of de-listing the gray wolf from the ESA in the norther Rockies.  The secretary in question is Ken Salazar, former senator from Colorado, and the de-listing of the wolf places 'management' of the animals in the hands of state agencies rather than under federal oversight.  Such management will amount to little more than controlled extirpation, as cattlemen and ranchers are given free reign to scour the predators off the land.  It's a markedly non-scientific approach, one dictated by fear, hatred, and greed, and has no basis in good environmental policy.  The success of the Endangered Species Act for the gray wolf, years of protection and repatriation, has been undone with a pen stroke.  If what has occurred in Wyoming is and indication, what is to come is wholesale slaughter.  

Ken Salazar's choice to enact left-over Bush policy is indicative of his entire environmental outlook.  Though a democrat, Salazar comes from a frontier-minded, ranching background, and has long been a proponent of extraction based industries in the American west.  His cabinet appointment by President Obama gave many ecologists and environmentalists cause to doubt Obama's true commitment to reform, and the recent wolf decision shows that such fears were justified.  The disappointment of the Obama administration is its moderation.  It's not a surprise, exactly; politics dirties the cleanest of intentions.  But it is discouraging.  It's a sign that even in the most open and rational of recent times, every step in the right direction comes at a cost.