PrintSeptember 4, 2009
Lies about Bush's record on science
Even though President Bush has left office, the media don't stop lying about his record. But it is surprising that one of the leading anti-Bush media has been the self-proclaimed conservative Daily Telegraph newspaper, which calls itself Britain's #1 quality newspaper.
One of the worst lies made against President Bush was that he was an enemy of science, and it must be refuted - not for Bush's sake, but for the sake of the truth and the Republican Party. If it is to win future elections, the myth that the GOP is anti-science must be refuted once and for all. And that requires debunking the lies about Bush's record on science.
In a March 2009 article in the Daily Telegraph, Ian Douglas made a series of false assertions, which will be debunked here one after another.
Claim #1: Bush banned stem cell research.
This is a lie repeated by the Telegraph (and other media) many times, yet even repeating it 100 times hasn't made it true. Douglas asserted that Harold Vamus has been
campaigning against the effect of America's religious right-wing lobby groups in politics, including the ban on stem cell research.
But Bush never banned any kind of stem cell research, whether adult stem cell, cord blood cell, or embryonic stem cell research. He has signed no such law -- whether an Act or an exec order.
Claim #2: Bush banned funding for stem cell research, and churches were more influential in his Administration than scientists were.
On March 9th, 2009, Douglas wrote:
Today Barack Obama will lift George Bush's ban on using US taxes to fund stem cell research. After long years of stagnant funding and church groups having more say over R&D spending than the science community, it looks as though there's some light seeping into the most powerful nation on earth.
The only problem with that assertion is that it's a lie. Bush never banned funding for stem cell research. He merely banned the use of taxpayers' money for research on embryonic stem cell lines produced after a fixed date. That is, he banned federal funding for the embryonic type of stem cell research. State and local governments, as well as private institutions, can spend however much money they want on ESCR.
Was the Christian commandment "Thou shall not kill" one of Bush's motives? Certainly! But it wasn't the only reason. Another was the fact that 70% of Americans oppose embryonic stem cell research, and the government has no right to spend their hard-earned money on something that they believe to be immoral. I am aware, however, that Mr Douglas - a British subject - doesn't know that.
Most importantly, ESCR is an embarrassing failure. Much money has been spent on it but so far, embryonic stem cells have not produced any cure to any disease. There are zero therapy types using embryonic stem cells, but 72 therapy types utilizing adult stem cells. The sources are here, here and here. Adult stem cell research has been generously funded by President Bush, and since August 2001, adult stem cells have produced remarkable cures, thus debunking another myth: that America's scientific research had stagnated during the Bush era.
ESCR is such a failure that the private sector has refused to invest in it. These two practical arguments caused President Bush to issue his Executive Order. The moral argument against ESCR was only an additional rationale.
Adult stem cell research has yielded good results that promise to end the divisive debates of the past. Why haven't liberals accepted the actual science, then?
Because they are committed to abortion rights and to the pro-abortion lobbies that got them elected. They won't allow objective, unbiased science to interfere with elections. They owe political debts to the pro-abortion lobbies, such as Planned Parenthood, on reelection. By authorizing funding for ESCR, Obama was not pursuing science, but rewarding his political allies.
Claim #3: Obama's stimulus funding for scientific research - $20 bn - was bigger than all science spending in the FY2008 federal budget signed by Bush.
This claim was made here. It is easily debunkable. President Bush's FY2008 budget is available here. The combined federal funding for:
- a) research by the Dept. of Agriculture
- b) the NIH
- c) DOE research
- d) the DARPA
- e) DVA research
Was $38.8 billion (in 2007's money), almost twice more than the stimulus funding for science. Add the $17.310 billion that Bush spent on NASA in FY2008, and you get a scientific budget of $56.110 billion (in 2007 dollars). That doesn't even include weapons research budgets nor CDC spending. $56.110 billion is not a smaller figure than $20 billion - it is actually larger than the $20 billion funding from the stimulus package. Moreover, that figure is not adjusted for inflation. If adjusted, it amounts to $58.370 billion in 2009 dollars.
Claim #4: President Bush and America have been dodging the responsibility for climate change, and Bush's scientists had to apologize for a government that ignored them.
Douglas wrote, "They [the science advisors of the government] will no longer have to deal with presidential urging to teach creationism and intelligent design in schools alongside actual science, climate change responsibility-dodging or having to apologise for an administration that pays them very little notice."
Yet neither Bush nor America have been dodging responsibility for climate change. As proven by scientists and documented on AT, global warming is not man-made - it is due to natural causes such as Sun rays. AT has published dozens of decent articles on this issue; please read this, this and this. The only arguments that alarmists have invoked is an authority (the IPCC), the "consensus" of scientists, and computer models. But they can serve only as evidence for junk science (which dates back to the Medieval Era). Real science is based on empirical evidence.
What Bush did was repealing a disastrous treaty which would've rendered 5 million Americans unemployed while allowing "developing countries" such as China to ride freely. These countries would, after a few years, emit as much CO2 as America would be forbidden to emit, so the net CO2 emission reduction would've been zero. Bush knew that this ludicrous treaty would've annihilated the US economy, so he abrogated it. For the same reasons, the Clinton Administration refused to send the Kyoto Protocol to the Senate - that refusal was announced by Al Gore.
And if global warming is true, America doesn't need a treaty to reduce its CO2 emissions. America could simply build 300 nuclear reactors (after all anti-nuclear regulations are repealed and the Yucca Mountain Depository is built) and beat the Kyoto Protocol goal by 15%. Reducing CO2 emissions and protecting the US economy are not mutually exclusive goals. But to reduce CO2 emissions, one must replace coal-fired electric plants with the only feasible alternative: a network of nuclear reactors.
Like many other journalists, Ian Douglas is propagating the myth that the Bush Administration was anti-science. Although facts don't matter to liberal ideologues like him, they do matter to the American people, and the GOP should debunk the myths about the Bush Administration.
