SCIENCE and the FEMININE GENDER

Much has been written about females educating in the sciences. Florence A. Cordova, President of Purdue University at its West Lafayette, Ind. campus and a scientist herself, points out that according to the National Science Foundation women earning bachelor’s degrees in science and engineering increased from 50,000 in 1966 to nearly 240,000 in 2006. This is nearly a fivefold increase in scientific degrees. A significant triumph for science.

Society will soon be crediting scientific achievements to women; the “not suitable to women blocking” is no longer a societal limit.

Hopefully, this increase in the scientific education of women will result in a change for the better; more research in incurable diseases without religious belief trumping science.

AUTISM, Controversy, Science and Multiple Sclerosis

The cause of AUTISM is one of the biggest debates amongst the millions of incurable diseases in the US. Unlike MS, however, mercury in a vaccine for AUTISM is said to be its cause by the anguished, sometimes violent, persons close to those affected. Science says it is not. For more on this debate, read the article on AUTISM in The Best in American Science Writing, 2006. You can also see the pros and cons of the debate on the Internet.

Rather than attacking the health workers involved in researching and administering the vaccine, why not prioritize the search for a cure like what has been done for AIDS?

Given the funds & time devoted to opposing the vaccine, wouldn’t most choose to invest in embryonic stem cell research, research using embryos to be discarded anyway? The same kind of research the NIH selected for the millions of dollars that are pouring in to search for a cure for AUTISM.