The Fruit Fly Dilemma: Palin’s War on Science

It looks like Sarah Palin has a new enemy in her war on science: a fruit fly.

In Pittsburgh on Friday, Governor Palin, in trying to play the role of “super maverick earmark destroyer,” accidentally tapped into a few of my wedge issues. In a speech to a small crowd, she talked about her son, Trig, born with Down syndrome, discussing him in relation to private school vouchers and earmarks for research that she claims draw funding away from educating children with special needs.

Palin’s constant denial of scientific fact and her willingness to disregard the need for greater scientific inquiry are perhaps even scarier and even more confusing than the “VOTE!” scarf with the donkeys plastered all over it, worn at a rally last week. It’s one thing when she takes the party-line stance against embryonic stem cell research or the disregard that global warming really exists. It’s another thing when she makes the outrageous claim that funding research – particularly on fruit flies – draws money away from special needs education, an issue in which she actually has a direct stake.

For the unfamiliar, Drosophila melanogaster, more commonly known as the fruit fly, are commonly used as a tool to study genetics. They are an ideal tool for such research because they are easily cultured, reproduce prodigiously, have readily available mutants for study, and because much is known about their genome. We use them to study gene transmission patterns and disease processes, and last year, to build a link between a specific protein and autism. This protein, neurexin, is needed to create functioning neural connections; when defective in humans, it can be a genetic risk factor for autism.

This is a clear-cut example in which Palin’s anti-science rhetoric counteracts the causes she claims to fight for. It also emphasizes further her resistance toward policies that will provide solutions to problems that afflict Americans. We fund research in this country by grants. The process is slow, time-consuming, and often frustrating, but it also is often the only way to obtain funding without being forced to seek aid from the private sector.

Cutting earmark funding of research would be disastrous to the forces of scientific innovation and could prove devastating to an economy that desperately needs to locate “the next big industry.” How do we find the best solution for alternative fuel if the only scientists who can afford to do the research work for Exxon-Mobile and BP? In the mean time, who is going to work out better, cleaner ways of extracting materials that we need to use while we roll out green technology? Who will make sure that medical research is creating new solutions to problems we can’t answer yet? Who will make sure that scientists can perform research that, while not ultimately profitable, will benefit society more than another new pill that can provide relief against erectile dysfunction? Earmarks in research provide a way to ensure that funding is provided to study very specific questions that might otherwise not be addressed.

Just for fun, I downloaded the “Big Kahuna” list of 2008 Congressional earmarks. I read the whole thing – less fun. I won’t deny that some of our money is being used for some pretty strange and perhaps inappropriate things. More than a few items, though, have goals oriented at treating chronic conditions and serious problems. For example, finding ways to measure blood glucose without a needle stick could lead to greater compliance in millions of patients with poorly-controlled diabetes, which could save billions of dollars in health care costs. Aquaculture research helps us better understand how to achieve sustainable, safe seafood supplies. Plenty of the earmarks that Palin rallies so hard against – dear Drosophila notwithstanding – provide funding for projects that aim to help the disabled through the funding of educational initiatives and building renovations.

I won’t pretend to think that the system is perfect where it stands now. But I don’t think that the solution is as simple as Governor Palin would like for it to be, and I don’t think that science is the enemy in budget earmarks, when there are still so many Bridges to Nowhere that account for much greater percentages of earmark spending. And while I agree fundamentally with Palin that more needs to be done to ensure the well-being of disabled Americans, her anti-science sensibilities prevent her from understanding that funding science can be a tool to carry us forward, by allowing scientists to seek innovative answers to the problems we face.

The Future of Choice

Several years ago, I spent some time as a campus organizer for the Missouri affiliate of a reproductive health advocacy group. Much of our time was spent “in the field,” attempting to find ways to engage students on a relatively conservative campus, in the crucial swing state of Missouri.

A few weeks ago, I was wandering around the website of my hometown newspaper, and stumbled across a small piece about my former employers. My state affiliate and their board of directors made a decision to disaffiliate from their national organization. This reflects a larger trend, at least in my home state, in which much of the choice community has given up on the ability to protect reproductive freedom at a federal level, and has instead turned their attentions to preserving and protecting choice on a state level.

Has the choice movement simply given up on the idea that every woman is entitled to comprehensive reproductive health care? It often seems so, when a national agenda is largely abandoned and attention is turned to preventing further destruction of the right to choose in the few states in which the right still exists, often in some highly adulterated form. The national movement focused on preserving Roe, while conservatives pushed for restrictions that served to weaken its protections at the state level. For years, this shift in strategy went seemingly unmet by reproductive health advocates, as they deigned to let the courts tackle problems and allowed Roe to become their watchword. Even in liberal states, legal protection drifted toward the center, with the passage of dangerous parental consent laws and waiting period requirements. The choice movement is only now catching up, realizing that there may be no way to protect a constitutionally-guaranteed right to choose – especially with the anti-choice extremist McCain/Palin ticket. Is the best strategy to focus on protecting the right where it is still likely to exist, even if Roe is overturned? To make sure that there are still places in this country where one can still go to terminate a pregnancy, even at great distance and at her own expense?

While painful to admit, there are advantages to this approach, one with which anti-choice advocates have had enormous success when they decided to focus their attention on state, rather than federal, law. Focusing on a state-by-state approach allows a more tightly-focused battle, a stronger message that can be tailored to appeal to the demographics of the state. Even here, though, problems exist – the horrendous South Dakota referendum that sought to ban abortion entirely was defeated only because the text of the law did not contain a provision for the life and health of the mother. Planned Parenthood and other organizations campaigning against the initiative jumped on this as a reason vote against the referendum. A wise choice in the short term, it is also an easy provision to add the next time around – and what then can they use to campaign against it? One can’t fault them for a winning strategy, but it was hardly a long-lasting one.

I receive far more material in my mailbox and inbox from my state affiliates of NARAL and Planned Parenthood, than from the national office. Whereas legislation on reproductive rights at the federal level receives attention rather infrequently, the availability of comprehensive reproductive health faces a consistent level of assault on the state level. Their efforts have been effective; several times now, they have mobilized to beat back legislation that would have made Missouri the state with the most restrictive abortion ban in the nation – even more draconian than the South Dakota law defeated in 2006.

The idea of giving up on the federal government’s ability to protect our sovereignty over our own bodies is, frankly, terrifying. However, the legislation passed over the last eight years is such that we can no longer trust it to do just that. The neoconservative political dominance of the 1990s and early 2000s brought about legislation and court decisions that allowed states to pass laws determining when physicians could perform abortions, banned specific types of abortion, and granted fetuses protection under the law. The direction of the Supreme Court, thanks to President Bush, has been set for years to come – and stare decisis doesn’t look like a doctrine the current court is determined to follow.

I’m thankful that I live somewhere now that offers strong protections toward a woman’s right to choose, but I know that, across state lines in Missouri, it’s only getting worse. At the end of the year, all but one clinic in the state will be forced to close. Referendums and state laws chipping away at comprehensive reproductive health succeed at a disconcerting rate. I know that my former colleagues, and my friends at NARAL and Planned Parenthood will do what they can to keep fighting back against the anti-choice crusaders, and I’ll continue to help them in whatever ways that I can. They’re running out of options, though, and when that day comes, there may not be a federal backup plan that can save them.