National Academy of Sciences
Harold Varmus interviewed on C-span
May/11/09 07:59
Yesterday morning, I was listening to Harold Varmus being interviewed live (interspersed with listener calls) on C-SPAN Radio. For those of you unfamiliar with Dr. Varmus, he is currently the co-chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, CEO of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, former Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1989. In other words, Dr. Varmus has all of the credentials of a scientists, if not one of the great scientists of our era.
I have been unable to find a transcript of the program, but a couple of points from the interview were particularly memorable to me. First, he made a full-throated support of vaccination of children, and made a diplomatic criticism of the anti-vaccination movement. The second point that stuck with me followed a call from an individual who had one of those “my friend was dying of this, and they went to this website and was cured of that” stories. In this case, the caller said a “friend” of hers was suffering from diabetes (not sure how bad or what type), and her friend went to some website (I was driving, so I didn’t have a chance to write it down) that told her to switch from a high carbohydrate diet to one with lots of proteins and fresh vegetables. Only this diet would “cure” the diabetes. Of course, my thought when I heard this story was, “well, switching to a low carb diet may have been the reason.” Read More...
I have been unable to find a transcript of the program, but a couple of points from the interview were particularly memorable to me. First, he made a full-throated support of vaccination of children, and made a diplomatic criticism of the anti-vaccination movement. The second point that stuck with me followed a call from an individual who had one of those “my friend was dying of this, and they went to this website and was cured of that” stories. In this case, the caller said a “friend” of hers was suffering from diabetes (not sure how bad or what type), and her friend went to some website (I was driving, so I didn’t have a chance to write it down) that told her to switch from a high carbohydrate diet to one with lots of proteins and fresh vegetables. Only this diet would “cure” the diabetes. Of course, my thought when I heard this story was, “well, switching to a low carb diet may have been the reason.” Read More...
Obama's science policy
Today, President Barack Obama gave a speech (audio version can be found here) to the National Academy of Sciences, the nation’s prestigious science advisors. The speech reaffirms his campaign promises regarding science policy (how refreshing that a politician actually follows up on promises made in the heat of the campaign) and follows up on his executive order to reverse George Bush’s ill-founded partial ban on stem-cell research. Below are a few key points of the speech that deserve repeating.
At such a difficult moment, there are those who say we cannot afford to invest in science. That support for research is somehow a luxury at a moment defined by necessities. I fundamentally disagree. Science is more essential for our prosperity, our security, our health, our environment, and our quality of life than it has ever been. And if there was ever a day that reminded us of our shared stake in science and research, it’s today.
Federal funding in the physical sciences as a portion of our gross domestic product has fallen by nearly half over the past quarter century. Time and again we’ve allowed the research and experimentation tax credit, which helps businesses grow and innovate, to lapse.Read More...
Our schools continue to trail. Our students are outperformed in math and science by their peers in Singapore, Japan, England, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, and Korea, among others. Another assessment shows American fifteen year olds ranked 25th in math and 21st in science when compared to nations around the world.