The President, The State of the Union, and Genetics

At last night's State of the Union, the president said "Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research, human cloning in all its forms, creating or implanting embryos for experiments, creating human-animal hybrids, and buying, selling or patenting human embryos." Jamie happened onto a link today which humorously and insightfully addresses this bit from the speech. It's worth your time. Relatedly segphault writes "Ars Technica has an interesting look at scientific research and technology proposals included in Bush's State of the Union address."

Comments

Re:Bush Promoting Science? Come On!

[damian cosmas]

Here's another one: Money Talks.

The NSF's budget has increased every year during the Bush administration. From 2001-2003, for example, the NSF granted more money to more researchers every year. Last year's budget proposed by Bush, according to the ACS included similar increases:

The FY05 administration request for NSF is $5.7 billion, a 3-percent increase or $167 million over the FY04 budget.....a 4.7-percent increase for the NSF Research & Related Activities account. .....The biggest increase in NSF's FY05 budget goes to its Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction account, which receives a 37.6-percent increase, bringing its funding level to $213.2 million in 2004.
The FY05 NSF increases would bring the average annual research grant award size to approximately $142,000, up $3,000 over FY04. Average annual grant duration would continue to be 3 years.

Oh yeah, and the NIH budget doubled[pdf] from 1999 to 2003. For several of those years, a man named George W. Bush was president.