Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
In August, Todd Akin—Republican candidate for the US Senate from Missouri—got into hot water with his party and became the “laughing stock of the planet” for remarks that he made about how women who are “legitimately raped” rarely get pregnant. Akin said the following during an interview on KTVI-TV:
First of all, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. . . But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something. You know I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.
Writing for Wired, Brandon Kleim said of Akin:
Aside from the sheer biological ludicrousness of Todd Akin’s ideas on female physiology, one unsettling subplot to the debacle is his presence on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.
That’s right: A man who, to put it gently, ignores what science tells us about how babies are made, helps shape the future of science in America. It would be shocking, but for the fact that many of the committee’s GOP members have spent the last several years displaying comparable contempt for climate science.
Kleim also wrote about other Republicans on the committee who seem to show a contempt for science and scientists:
The committee’s chair, Ralph Hall (R-Texas), lumps “global freezing” together with global warming, which he doesn’t believe humans can significantly impact because “I don’t think we can control what God controls.” Dana Rohrbacher (R-CA) thinks cutting down trees reduces levels of greenhouse gases they absorb. Mo Brooks (R-Alabama) still trots out the debunked notion that a scientific consensus existed in the 1970s on “global cooling,” which he portrays as a scare concocted by scientists “in order to generate funds for their pet projects.”
‘We ought to have some believable science.’
Dan Benishek (R-Michigan) strikes that climate-scientists-as-charlatans note, dismissing contemporary research as “all baloney. I think it’s just some scheme.” Paul Broun (R-Georgia) says that “Scientists all over this world say that the idea of human-induced global climate change is one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated out of the scientific community.”
For the rest of this post, I’ll focus on Rep. Paul Broun, the chairman of the House Science Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight. Broun doesn’t just think that the “scientific community” has perpetrated a hoax about climate change—he also thinks scientists have made up lies about evolution, the age of planet Earth, the Big Bang Theory, and embryology…and that those lies come “straight from the pit of Hell.”
During a speech that Broun gave at the 2012 Sportsman’s Banquet at Liberty Baptist Church in Hartwell, Georgia on September 27th, he said this:
God’s word is true. I’ve come to understand that. All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the big bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell. It’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior. You see, there are a lot of scientific data that I’ve found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth. I don’t believe that the earth’s but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says.
In his speech, Broun claimed that as a legislator he takes direction from the Bible:
And what I’ve come to learn is that it’s the manufacturer’s handbook, is what I call it. It teaches us how to run our lives individually, how to run our families, how to run our churches. But it teaches us how to run all of public policy and everything in society. And that’s the reason as your congressman I hold the Holy Bible as being the major directions to me of how I vote in Washington, D.C., and I’ll continue to do that.
He continued:
Our Constitution was written by men that believed that! And in fact, the Constitution’s written on Biblical principles — in fact, the three branches of government come right from Isaiah, Isaiah 33:22, go look it up!
From Wonkette:
In an inexorable speech that is available in full on YouTube (but which we will mercifully summarize), Broun attributes his 2007 election to the direct intervention of the Lord Jesus Christ, shows slides of a Kodiak bear and a lion that he heroically shot, and tells a story about heroically shooting another lion in the face, explaining that “God directed that bullet, because if I’d missed, that lion would have been in the back of the truck with me and I’d have been clawed to death.” He even tells a story about his heroic deployment to Afghanistan for 31 days earlier this year as a member of the Naval Reserve, where he saw an Afghan soldier who’d been seriously injured by an IED but survived somehow. And what those awful injuries reminded him of, said Broun, was that the Bible tells us that human beings are “fearfully and wonderfully made.” Broun knows this “as a physician,” and this line from Psalm 139:14 somehow proves that evolution is fake.
But did he learn that in college, or in med school? No. He was taught that
we all came from a ‘Big Bang,’ and we were trained in all this stuff about evolution…what I was taught in college and medical school and even high school that we went ‘from Goo to Zoo to You.’ And I believed that.
Phil Plait of Discover Magazine’s Bad Astronomy blog wrote in his post The US Congress Anti-Science Committee that Broun sits on the committee with other anti-science legislators—including Akin—whom “the Republican majority placed on that committee. Men who think global warming is a fantasy. Men who think women have magic vaginas. Men who think the Earth is thousands, not billions, of years old.”
Kind of scary, don’t you think, that we have legislators like Broun who have little respect for science serving on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology?
NOTE: One might think that a man who is so anti-science may not be an educated person—but that is far from the truth. Braun graduated from the University of Georgia in 1967 with a B.S. in Chemistry—and in, 1971, he received his Medical Doctor degree from the Medical College of Georgia.
SOURCES
Paul Broun: Evolution, Big Bang ‘Lies Straight From The Pit Of Hell’ (Huffington Post)
The US Congress Anti-Science Committee (Discover Magazine)
Republican Senate Nominee: Victims Of ‘Legitimate Rape’ Don’t Get Pregnant (TPM 2012)
Todd Akin and the Anti-Science House Science Committee (Wired)
Video shows ‘scientist’ in Congress saying evolution is from ‘pit of Hell’ (NBC News)
Hero Rep. Paul Broun Takes Bible-Based Stand Against Hell-Spawned Lies of ‘Science’ (Wonkette)
Wingnut Watch: Paul Broun Says Progressives Trying to ‘Destroy America’ (Rolling Stone)
Members of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
This never-ending Scopes Monkey Trial business sounds like Boobie Anti-Intellectualism to me.
Thanks for censoring that, Hymee.
He was born
In Oklahoma
His wife’s name’s Betty Lou Thelma Liz
He’s not responsible for what he’s doin’
His mother made ‘im what he is
And it’s up against the wall, Redneck mother…
-Ray Wylie Hubbard
bettykath is General Jack Ripper’s daughter. He taught bettykath that “flouride is drying up our precious bodily fluids.” Only bettykath has taken it to a whole other level. The General and Kubrick would be proud.
Went in dumb, come out dumb too…
Hustlin round Atlanta in their alligators shoes.
We’re Redneck, We’re Rednecks..
We don know an arse from hole in the ground,,
We’re Rednecks,,,,,
We are keeping the smart guys down.
-Randy Newman, Good Ol Boys, album. circa 1974
edited for moderation
Think tank with a leak in it is more like it.
Here we have brain trust in full swing…… Kinda like a think tank without the ability to process……
“One might think that a man who is so anti-science may not be an educated person—but that is far from the truth. Braun graduated from the University of Georgia in 1967 with a B.S. in Chemistry—and in, 1971, he received his Medical Doctor degree from the Medical College of Georgia.”
Elaine,
The Medical College of Georgia is ranked 77th of 123 U.S. medical schools by the NIH. http://www.residentphysician.com/Medicalschool_rankings.htm
I’m not surprised. Obviously the Congressman wasn’t too impressed by what they taught him there.
bettykath,
DDT does not bother giving you polio. A virus does that. DDT just poisons you, and every other living thing.
I was in the last elementary school class in which anyone got polio. We stopped getting polio because we took the Salk vaccine (oral).
Wanna go back to the 19th century? Stop vaccinating people.
Four words of advice:
Take a biology course.
bettykath,
I don’t think so.
DDT – A Brief History and Status
Development of DDT
http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/factsheets/chemicals/ddt-brief-history-status.htm
Excerpt:
DDT (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane) was developed as the first of the modern synthetic insecticides in the 1940s. It was initially used with great effect to combat malaria, typhus, and the other insect-borne human diseases among both military and civilian populations and for insect control in crop and livestock production, institutions, homes, and gardens. DDT’s quick success as a pesticide and broad use in the United States and other countries led to the development of resistance by many insect pest species.
*****
Salk Polio Vaccine Conquered Terrifying Disease
by JOE PALCA
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4585992
Excerpt:
Fifty years ago, on April 12, 1955, the world heard one of the most eagerly anticipated announcements in medical history: Dr. Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine worked. The vaccine turned a disease that once horrified America into a memory.
NPR’s Joe Palca looks back at the science that created a successful vaccine — and the people behind the medical milestone.
Timeline: The Fight Against Polio
1800s Paralytic poliomyelitis (polio) takes its toll worldwide, affecting mostly children. The disease is known as infantile paralysis.
1894 The first known polio epidemic in the United States occurs in Vermont.
1908 Dr. Karl Landsteiner discovers that a virus causes polio.
1916 The first major polio epidemic strikes in the United States; 27,000 people suffer paralysis and 6,000 die. Increasing numbers of outbreaks occur each year.
1921 Franklin D. Roosevelt is diagnosed with polio.
1928 Iron lungs are introduced to help patients with acute polio breathe.
1932 Franklin D. Roosevelt is elected President of the United States.
1938 President Roosevelt founds the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (NFIP, known today as the March of Dimes).
— At the New York University School of Medicine, Dr. Jonas Salk begins working with virologist and epidemiologist Dr. Thomas Francis Jr. on an influenza vaccine later used by the U.S. military during World War II.
1947 The University of Pittsburgh recruits Dr. Jonas Salk to develop a virus research program. Techniques Salk picked up while working with influenza are later used to develop the polio vaccine.
1948-49 Scientists confirm the existence of three strains of poliovirus.
1949 Dr. John Enders, Dr. Frederick Robbins and Dr. Thomas Weller develop a way to grow poliovirus in tissue culture, a breakthrough that aided in the creation of the polio vaccine. Their work earned the three scientists the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 1954.
1952 The United States reports 57,628 polio cases — the worst U.S. epidemic on record.
— Dr. Salk and his colleagues develop a potentially safe, injectable vaccine against polio. Nearly 15,000 Pittsburgh-area subjects, mostly children, receive the vaccine in pilot trials.
— Salk’s former mentor, Dr. Thomas Francis, designs, directs and evaluates field trials of the polio vaccine. Unprecedented in their scope and size, the trials involve around 1.8 million children from the United States, Canada and Finland. They are among the first to use the double-blind process that has since become standard.
1955 On April 12, Francis announces the results of the field trials, declaring that Salk’s vaccine is “safe, effective and potent.”
1955-57 Once the vaccine becomes available, U.S. polio cases drop by 85-90 percent.
*****
NOTE: The use of DDT was banned in 1972.
The incidence of polio corresponds to the use of DDT.
Speaking of vaccinations, all you 60 year olds out there get your shingles shot! Shingles really sucks!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/05/paul-ryan-60-percent-of-a_n_1943073.html
I would like to post on this blog, but they already do it themselves.
Worst Persons – Rep. Paul Broun and the ER – 2009-10-05
Rep Broun – Climate Change Is A Hoax
rafflaw,
I had to do some research on Salk last year when I was writing a poem and brief biographical note about him for “Dare to Dream…Change the World”–a collection of children’s poems that was just published by Kane Miller.
I learned a lot about him from biographies that I read and from the following interview:
Jonas Salk Interview
Developer of Polio Vaccine
May 16, 1991
San Diego, California
http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/sal0int-1
Elaine, Thanks. I didn’t know it was polio shots only now. We didn’t know if our adopted son from Colombia had any vaccinations so the poor tyke had to get a bunch of shots. He also had giardia which meant the most God awful oral medication had to be swallowed. This was I think 10 days/3 times per, but it seemed like 10 months. He fought every dose.
nick,
Nigeria Sees Polio Outbreak from Mutated Vaccine Virus
A mutated virus from the oral vaccine used to prevent the spread of polio in Nigeria has paralyzed at least 124 children in the West African country this year.
August 24, 2009
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/health/july-dec09/polio_08-24.html
nick,
In 2000, the CDC recommended using only Salk’s IPV (Inactivated Polio Vaccine).
From CDC:
Polio Vaccination
There are two types of vaccine that protect against polio: inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) and oral polio vaccine (OPV). IPV, used in the United States since 2000, is given as an injection in the leg or arm, depending on patient’s age. Polio vaccine may be given at the same time as other vaccines. Most people should get polio vaccine when they are children. Children get 4 doses of IPV, at these ages: 2 months, 4 months, 6-18 months, and booster dose at 4-6 years. OPV has not been used in the United States since 2000 but is still used in many parts of the world.
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd-vac/polio/default.htm
Elaine, I have a cousin who was struck w/ polio. She had to wear leg braces through high school. I too remember the scares prior to the vaccine. I remember a summer where we couldn’t go swimming and were kept inside almost the entire summer. There was an outbreak of about a dozen kids getting polio in the area. I remember the vaccine and it was given almost like a sacrament in a sugar cube @ school. And like you, I remember polio being eliminated from our culture. Salk was a true hero. But, there are folks who believe charlatans. That never changes. I also loved Albert Sabin because he gave us the oral vaccine..no more shots!
Zarathustra, if Carl Sagan DID die all over again, of course, Akin would say that it was an illegitimate death.