Friday, August 25, 2006
Better late than never, the FDA announced yesterday that the
emergency contraceptive will be available over the counter, but
only if you're over 18. One might suppose the consequences of
unplanned pregnancy would be greater for women under 18. That it
was approved at all after a 3-year struggle must be credited to
three women. Susan Wood, resigned as head of women's health at
the FDA a year ago to protest failure to approve over-the-counter
sale (WN 2 Sep 05). Senators
Clinton and Murray made it clear that without it Bush family
friend Andrew von Eschenbach would not be confirmed to head FDA.
The Chronicle of Higher Education reported on Tuesday that the
list of majors that qualify for Smart grants, prepared by the
Department of Education, had a blank line. It turned out to be
the line where Evolutionary Biology should have appeared. The
Department says the exclusion was inadvertent. That's possible,
but it reminds us that evolution denial in America is not only
widespread, it's growing. According to a study by Jon Miller of
Michigan State University in Lansing, acceptance of evolution by
Americans declined from 45% in 1985 to 40% in 2005. Only Turkey
and the Vatican trail the US. For example, intelligent design
critic Rev. George Coyne was replaced as director of the Vatican
Observatory (WN 18 Nov 05) .
Michael Griffin in an Aug 21 message to Science Committee members
wrote: "The most appropriate recourse for NASA Advisory Council
members who believe the NASA program should be something other
than what it is, is to resign." They did. WN looked up the NASA
Mission Statement. It begins: "To advance and communicate
scientific knowledge and understanding of the earth, the solar
system, and the universe." Is that what they're doing on the
ISS? NASA has agreed to an advertisement for a Canadian golf
club manufacturer, in which a Russian cosmonaut on Nov 3 will hit
a golf ball into space from the ISS. What is the appropriate
recourse for an Administrator who wants NASA to be something
other than the agency created by an act of Congress?
This is the slogan of Steorn, a Dublin company that is assembling
a jury of scientists to evaluate a device using moving permanent
magnets to produce free energy. WN has exposed so many of these
devices in the past that it gets depressing. So this time we
examined the slogan instead. It's from George Bernard Shaw's
Anajanska [1919], but the full quote must have been been lost.
We've found the full quote: "All great truths begin as
blasphemies, but all blasphemies do not become great truths."
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