The Anti Science President

President George Bush kisses Kaitlyne McNamara, who was born with Spina Bifida. The President has vetoed a bill to fund embryonic stem cell research with federal money, the second time Bush vetoed a similar bill that supports the research.

Image: Alex Wong/Getty Images

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The other day I asked veteran venture capitalist Brook Byers of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers for his thoughts about biotech in 2008. He told me that recent breakthroughs in stem cell research will lead to more commercial interest and that genetics applied to individual diagnoses for disease will continue to be huge.

He mentioned a few other predictions, but it was his final assertion that really resonated: that we need "a new president of the U.S. who will embrace science and stop the assault on reason"—borrowing the last four words from Al Gore's book of that title.

These are strong words coming from Byers, a thoughtful biotech investor for 30 years. He usually applies his soft Georgia accent to talk about technology and scientific discoveries, not politics.

Such is the frustration and weariness with the current administration, even out here in faraway Silicon Valley, which has gone through various phases in dealing with the current occupant of the White House.

There was, for example, dismay at such policies as the 2001 restriction of federal funding for stem cell research. Then there was an attempt to work with the president on a compromise. Then, finally, a decision to go around him—most famously with the successful California referendum of 2004 that will raise $3 billion over 10 years to fund stem cell research, circumventing federal restrictions.

As 2008 begins, many bio folk in Silicon Valley have started counting the days until Bush leaves office. Lassitude about the president, however, should not stop us from perhaps the most crucial takeaway from these past seven years: that even in a civilization built on technology the process of maintaining a healthy scientific establishment can be precarious when leaders become either hostile to science or prone to neglecting it. In the case of President Bush, we got both.

These past seven years might be termed a Galileo moment—a hopefully brief interlude in which the priorities of leaders shifted from a respect for science and facts (convenient or inconvenient) to one in which science was ignored—or denied—if it interfered with policies, politics, or ideology.

A similar situation occurred in 17th-century Italy. Galileo Galilei‘s support of a heliocentric universe, as proposed by Nicolas Copernicus, ran afoul of the Roman Catholic Church. Earlier, during the Renaissance, the church had embraced scientific discovery but had then returned to strict interpretations of ideology and dogma as it fought a bitter feud against Protestant reformers.

Church officials declared that the earth is the center of the universe, despite evidence to the contrary—and forced Galileo to recant his views under threat of torture.

The papacy's denial of science caused technological development in Southern Europe to languish while momentum for progress grew in the north and west.

History is repeating itself to some extent during the waning days of the Bush regime as research momentum in some fields has shifted overseas—not only to Western and Northern Europe but also to China, India, and elsewhere.

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