Sarah Palin against spending money on Drosophila research
Add story link to stumble uponIt was absolutely shocking to hear Sarah palin’s views on Drosophila research going on in various parts of world.She is of the opinion that money should not be spent on small fruit flies ,which are of no use to public life and rather divert that money in curing the disabilities of children.
For many parents of children with disabilities, the most valuable thing of all is information. Early identification of a cognitive or other disorder, especially autism, can make a life-changing difference. […] We’ve got a three trillion dollar budget, and Congress spends some 18 billion dollars a year on earmarks for political pet projects. That’s more than the shortfall to fully fund the IDEA. Where does a lot of that earmark money end up anyway? […] 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.
why people don’t understand or they don’t want to understand, that without investing money in doing fundamental research there will not much growth in applied fields like medicine.Drosophila (fruit flies) played a significant role in understanding various aspects of cell biology ,developmental biology,neurobiology and other various fields also owe a lot to this little arthropod.This is largely due to availability of wide array of genetic and molecular tools ,which allows easy way to dissect numerous pathways of this organism.Drosophila shares at least 60% of genes with humans ,which include various genes involved in causing diseases.The results obtained in this tiny fly can be extended to other organisms (as all organisms share a common ancestor and hence similar gene mechanisms) to probe the fundamental mechanisms that underlie core processes in the formation of the different tissues and organs like heart,eyes and nervous system ,exactly the thing Sarah Palin claims are so important.
You don’t have to be genius to known the impact Drosophila had in understanding various human diseases like autism, Alzheimer’s , Fragile X syndrome, Parkinson’s and various cancers ,just give a search in Pubmed and you end up 100’s of hits.Its sheer common sense that experiments cannot be done on humans and this is where model organisms are immensely useful ,and Drosophila is one of the widely used across the world to understand various aspects of life.If so called developed countries think this way and stop giving money for fundamental research ,I don’t want to think about the situations among developing countries and under developed ones.
Read what other bloggers what to say about Sarah Palin’s first policy speech
Now it’s personal: Sarah Palin attacks my work @ http://bjoern.brembs.net/
Sarah Palin: Ignorant and anti-science @ Pharyngula
Palin not for fruit fly research @ Think evolution
Sarah Palin: a Blithering Idiot Who Could Destroy Science and Medicine @ Biochemical soul
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How is Palin talking about stopping funding for Drosophila? The funding went to research for stopping the fruit fly that damages California’s Olives. Not research on autism or even genetics in general. The bottom line is that if our Congress is passing a bill let’s say a Bailout everything in that bill needs to pertain the bailout not funding something outside of the parameters of the bill. Our government spends 16 BILLION DOLLARS a year on earmarks (Barack Obama quoted this number in two debates) that might be a small percentage of our annual budget but when looking to balance the budget this might be a good starting point.
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