Targeting the Drosophila vote

October 30, 2008

1 Min Read
No Flies on Sarah

1:30 PM -- The Republican ticket continues to refine its science policy. Adam Rutherford writes on The Guardian Website:

  • Although science hasn't featured prominently in the US election, Sarah Palin may have alienated herself from the entire basic research community. In her first policy speech last Friday, she called for the federal government to fund the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and focused on alerting people to the misspent money of Congress. Here's what she said:

    "You've heard about some of these pet projects, they really don't make a whole lot of sense and sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not."

    It's difficult to know where to start with this breathtakingly stupid comment...

    Richard Wolffe, the senior White House correspondent for Newsweek, commented on this, with a generous prefix:

    "I'm going to be as restrained and measured as I possibly can about this. But this is the most mindless, ignorant, uninformed comment that we have seen from Governor Palin so far, and there's been a lot of competition for that prize."

Fruit flies, as most educated people are aware, have long served as the basis of genetic research -- including the kind of research that benefits Individuals with Disabilities. Like Sarah Palin.

I kid you not.

— Larry, Attack Monkey, Light Reading

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