Palin's creationist views would endanger U.S. progress

Arthur Caplan, is chairman of the medical-ethics department at the University of Pennsylvania

Philly.com

There has been no end of reaction to Sen. John McCain's selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice presidential pick. After the initial "Sarah who?" response from those in the other 49 states, some commentators have decided it was brilliant to place a dynamic young woman at McCain's side.

Despite Palin's boisterous coming-out speech at the Republican convention, I think McCain has actually thrown away any chance he had of being elected because the selection of Palin puts an issue on the table that McCain may find exceedingly uncomfortable to have to wrestle with over the next two months.

No, I don't mean Palin's views on abortion, although she is staunchly anti-choice. Nor do I mean her pro-gun views, her vociferous opposition to embryonic stem cell research, or her involvement in "Troopergate."

Instead, her selection forces out into the open the question of whether the United States can compete in world markets that rely on our scientific and technical prowess with a creationist as vice president or president.

Palin wants creationism taught in school. She told the Anchorage Daily News that schools ought to "teach both." Really?

Faithful followers of the battle over creationism in Pennsylvania will recall that nearly three years ago federal Judge John E. Jones barred a public school district from teaching "intelligent design" in biology classes. The judge delivered a stinging attack on the Dover Area School Board, saying its decision in October 2004 to insert "intelligent design" into the science curriculum violated the constitutional separation of church and state. Creationism is a religious belief that has no place in science classes.

Of all the staunchly conservative views Palin holds, this one may pose the greatest threat to the future of our children, your health, and the nation's economy.

It may thrill the Republican Party's conservative base to have a woman as president who believes in biblical inerrancy and wants to see creationism taught as science, but it will mean the United States can kiss goodbye any chance this nation has of using biomedical science to take on the rest of the world in biotechnology, alternative-energy technology, synthetic biology or genetics.

And that means we can more or less kiss goodbye any chance we have of using our current prowess in biomedical science to drive our economy forward both in states such as Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey and in high-tech areas around the country.

The pundits will gurgle on as they have been about how Palin can gut a fish or cook up a mean mooseburger. But what cannot be ignored is her view that a narrow religious account of how the world began and evolved belongs in the science classroom.

If Palin's fundamentalist religious thinking are on display in the White House, then the odds are lower that America can tap biological science to work our way out of global warming, oil dependency, pollution, dying oceans, and finding new ways to grow healthy food.

A vote for Palin, or any creationist, is casting a vote for change, all right. A change back to the lifestyles of the 19th century.

E-mail Art Caplan at caplan@mail.med.upenn.edu.