Abstract

Lost in Space

The author expresses her belief that the administration of United States President George W. Bush should redirect the money it plans to spend on space exploration to fund programs to solve what she considers to be more pressing social and medical problems on Earth. She is surprised to find that 48 percent of respondents in an AP-Ipsos poll favor proposals for space exploration while 48 percent oppose it and that 55 percent oppose it when given the option of spending the money on education and healthcare. She considers space exploration to be an expensive and unjustifiable proposal, and cites a budgetary expense of hundreds of billions of dollars over the next several decades. She proposes that this money can be spent solving scientific challenges that might have greater social and public health benefits. She suggests that a study of global warming and its ancillary problems is more important, but concedes that the Bush administration may not find this an important expense. She cites an article in the January 13, 2004 issue of the ?New York Times? as evidence of the importance of such a study. She also suggests that this money can be better spent on AIDS prevention research, reproductive health, and healthcare and human rights issues in underdeveloped countries. She then proposes that Islamic fundamentalism in poor nations can be countered by funding education programs, including astronomy, for underprivileged youth. Her belief that the Bush administration is contemptuous of science is based on several actions they have taken, including the selection of Christian fundamentalists such as David Hager as members of Food and Drug Administration advisory panels, and an apparent indifference to research on the effectiveness of condoms to prevent HIV and the ineffectiveness of abstinence-only sex education. Implicit in her argument is a belief that the Bush administration maintains destructive social and scientific policies.