DENVER – Democrat John Kerry, backed by 48 Nobel Prize winners, on Monday criticized President Bush for allowing ideology rather than facts to determine science policies and repeated his pledge to overturn the ban on federal funding of research on new stem cell lines.
“We need a president who believes in science again in America,” Kerry said. “We need to be prepared, and one of the first things that I will do as president by executive order immediately is reverse the gag rule and also move America forward to do stem cell research and begin to find the cures we need.”
Kerry was speaking at a fund-raiser in Aspen, Colo., where he made a brief stop before a scheduled speech in Denver.
In a letter endorsing Kerry, 48 scientists who have won the Nobel Prize said the Bush administration is undermining the nation’s future by impeding medical advances, turning away scientific talent with its immigration practices and ignoring scientific consensus on global warning and other critical issues.
“Unlike previous administrations, Republican and Democratic alike, the Bush administration has ignored unbiased scientific advice in the policymaking that is so important to our collective welfare,” their letter stated.
The Kerry campaign said the Massachusetts senator will invest in scientific research to foster discoveries to protect the economy as well as to help cure diseases.
Stem cell research gained renewed attention earlier this month after the death of former President Reagan, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease.
The Bush administration places “politics over science to please their right-wing constituency,” the Kerry campaign said.
The administration, according to a campaign statement, removed information about global warming from a 2003 Environmental Protection Agency report; ordered changes to a report that described damage that would be caused by drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; and deleted information about condoms from government Web sites.
Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt said the president has made an unprecedented commitment to the sciences and funding levels are at record highs. “President Bush has an enormous investment in the National Institutes of Health and other areas of scientific research,” Schmidt said.
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