By reinstituting stem cell research plus prohibiting political interference with federal scientists, President Obama banished Dark Age dogmatism of President George W. Bush, whose obstructionist quackery someday will rank alongside the bizarre "heresy" prosecutions of history's early scientists.
Rigid religious groups will denounce Obama's stem cell decision out of spiritual conviction. Republican politicians will glibly denounce it to harvest cheap reelection benefits.
For eight years, the Bush presidency instinctively imposed doctrine in policies and in hiring faith-screened minions to implement them. Bush banned stem cell research when religious pressure groups declared using embryos amounted to killing the unborn. Right-to-life fanatics dictated Bush's bizarre use of executive authority to keep brain-dead Terri Schiavo on life support. Science's greatest setback, however, was when Bush pooh-poohed global warming and muzzled scientists from confirming destructive climate change. Some "End Times" biblical militants argued against global warming remedies, insisting it would interfere with God's plan to end life on the planet. Ever-cynical Dick Cheney, however, had other reasons to reject global warming science. He was protecting industry cronies from cleaning up their pollution.
In time, Bush's anti-science acts will seem as atrocious as religious rebukes of scientists 400 years ago. In the early 1500s, for example, the Catholic Church denounced astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus and his theory that the earth is not the center of the universe. In 1600, a Copernican follower, Giordano Bruno, was burned at the stake for his scientific and religious views. Anyone who believed the earth wasn't flat also was ridiculed. The most celebrated victim of Dark Age ignorance, astronomer Galileo Galilei, was condemned to house arrest for 7 years the church for his belief in Copernicus and his own advanced research of the universe.
Americans also endured a bleak era of religious dogma when Sundays were governed by "blue laws"—statutory prohibitions on stores remaining open on the Christian Sabbath. Jail awaited some violators.
Whether branding scientists as heretics or enforcing Sunday "blue laws," the measures were considered at the time to be necessary to protect religious virtues.
The same religious pressure drove the Bush White House to extremes in denouncing stem cell research and findings about global warming.
As 21st century humankind knows, ancient pioneers of science were correct in their prescient discoveries.
Galileo has been vindicated mightily. A space probe bearing his name traveled 2.8 billion miles to explore the planet Jupiter between 1995 and 2003 and provide astonishing data about the mysterious planet.
Today's stem cell pioneers someday also will be hailed as giants of discovery.
