Politics and Ethics – Page 89

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Stem Cell Cover-Up?

May 24, 2004

Stem cells, most have heard, hold promise for many life-saving cures. Michael Fumento in Insight Magazine claims that while adult stem cells have shown many positive results, the media and science establishments tend to hype the benefits of embryonic stem cells while glossing over the ethical and moral problems they present. Recently, Nature1 […]

Bible and Theology

Does Darwinism Contribute to Sexual Deviancy?

May 17, 2004

Joan Roughgarden (Stanford U.) is a transsexual biologist. Although a convinced Darwinian, “she” claims to have disproved Darwin’s theory of sexual selection (see 02/26/2003 headline). Two reviews of her book Evolution’s Rainbow: Diversity, Gender and Sexuality in Nature and People (University of California Press, 2003) appeared recently, one in Nature1 and another in Science.2 The […]

Education

Montana Schools Not Allowed to Question Darwinism

May 13, 2004

“Objective origins” is against the law in Darby, Montana (see 02/27/2004 headline). A policy change proposed by a local minister would have encouraged students to “analyze scientific strengths and weaknesses of existing scientific theories, including the theory of evolution.” It didn’t lose because of a vote on the policy, or because of the threats of […]

Education

Italy Waffles on School Darwinism

April 29, 2004

It’s not just an American thing; the politicians and scientists in Italy, also, are polarizing around Darwin. The education ministry just dropped a requirement to teach evolution in elementary and middle schools as part of a major overhaul of education guidelines. A news brief in the April 28 issue of Science1 claims that pressure “may” […]

Politics and Ethics

Eugenics Documentary Opens at Holocaust Museum

April 22, 2004

Michael Ollove at the Baltimore Sun reports on a new exhibit at the U.S. Holocaust Museum entitled Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race. The exhibit shows a 1937 Nazi propaganda film that invokes the law of natural selection as support for weeding out the unfit. Ollove writes, The narrator declares that “we humans have sinned […]

Politics and Ethics

Does Ethics Emerge From Genes Alone?

April 21, 2004

Gene Robinson wants to get us “beyond nature and nurture” in discussions of behavior. Robinson, of the Department of Entomology and Neuroscience at the University of Illinois in Urbana, wrote an essay in the April 16 issue of Science1 that suggests it is not “either-or” but “both-and” – both genetics and the environment affect the […]

Education

Evolutionists Violate Church-State Separation

April 2, 2004

John G. West thinks he has the NCSE in a hammerlock. The evolution-only advocacy group, headed by Eugenie Scott, has used religious arguments to promote evolution on their new “Understanding Evolution” website (see 02/29/2004 entry). West, an associate director of the Discovery Institute, writing for National Review, claims they are violating their own principle of […]

Politics and Ethics

Scientific Elitism Trumps Democracy

March 12, 2004

They don’t want it, but they’re going to get it. Britons have expressed outrage and anger over genetically-modified foods, such as pesticide-resistant maize, reports Jim Giles in Nature.1 But the government has listened to scientists who have assured government ministers it is safe. On March 9, they approved commercial planting of GM maize “in the […]

Politics and Ethics

Science Journal Editors Face Accountability

March 4, 2004

This quote by a journal editor comes from a news item in the Mar. 4 issue of Nature:1 “Like everybody else, we are much more interested in other people’s accountability than we are in our own,” explains Richard Smith, editor of the British Medical Journal (BMJ), who helped to draft the new code. “Editors are […]

Bible and Theology

How Darwinians Approach the Golden Rule

February 22, 2004

Is nothing sacred? Gretchen Vogel has written a piece on “The Evolution of the Golden Rule” in the Feb. 20 issue of Science.1 Jesus Christ and most religious teachers have taught the Golden Rule as a moral principle and a sacred duty, but to Darwinians, it must have evolved like everything else. Yet […]

Bible and Theology

Was the Nobel Denied to a Creationist?

February 9, 2004

Rick Weiss, writing in Smithsonian Magazine (Dec. 2003), analyzes Raymond Damadian’s “prize fight” over the 2003 Nobel for Physiology and Medicine (see 11/10/2003 and 10/10/2003 entries). He suggests the possibility that one of the main reasons was Damadian’s views on creation. A Nobel spokesman denies it, but Weiss wonders: But it is difficult not to […]

Early Man

Evolutionists Publish Racist Book

February 6, 2004

“Disturbing” is how Robert N. Proctor (Penn State) describes a new book by two prominent evolutionists in the Feb. 5 issue of Nature.1 The book is Race: The Reality of Human Differences by Vincent Sarich and Frank Miele (Westview, 2004), and Proctor has a lot of politically correct diatribe to heap on it, though reluctantly: […]

Darwin and Evolution

Why Darwin Is Like Yoda, and Darwinism Like Marxism

February 4, 2004

Homage for the master is palpable in John Vandermeer’s review (Science, Jan. 23)1 of a thick new book entitled Niche Construction: The Neglected Process in Evolution by Odling-Smee, Laland and Feldman (Princeton, 2004). Vandermeer seems almost worshipful in his opening lines: The nascent germ of many novel ideas in biology can be traced directly or […]

Education

Legality Argument

February 3, 2004

The Discovery Institute has posted remarks by David DeWolf, a law professor, to the Darby, Montana School District. He addresses concerns that have been raised about the legality and constitutionality of a proposed change to their science policy that would permit “teaching the controversy” about origins in the science classroom. Has it come to this, […]

Education

Minnesota Debates Darwin Teaching

January 22, 2004

Minnesota is next in line in the Darwin wars. This science framework writing committee has taken the unusual step of submitting two drafts to the legislature, a majority report with the usual Darwin-only rule, and a minority with two improvements, according to Seth Cooper of the Discovery Institute: The first benchmark improvement proposed by the […]

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