IF you鈥檙e a senior official in the Clinton administration, it has not been
easy to stay out of the line of fire aimed at the President these days. It鈥檚
clearly been a time to pronounce one鈥檚 interest in things far removed from the
White House. And it turns out that this form of duck-and-cover has been pretty
good for the environment.
Why the environment? Well, Vice-President Al Gore is probably the eminence
most in danger of going down with the ship, so he鈥檚 been especially busy finding
good causes to occupy his time. Since the environment is Gore鈥檚 speciality,
we鈥檝e been hearing more than ever from him about global warming. Conveniently,
it鈥檚 the hottest year on record, giving Gore plenty of material to work with. El
Ni帽o, and the question of whether global warming made it worse, has also
occupied the Vice-President well past El Ni帽o鈥檚 disappearance for the
year.
This month, with the sordid details of Clinton鈥檚 dalliance finally unveiled,
Gore has moved on to the issue of suburban sprawl鈥攖hat is, how development
is eating up our farmland and green space. To launch an initiative on the
subject, Gore decided to go to Portland, Oregon, a city well planned to limit
sprawl . . . and just about the farthest point from Washington DC on the
map.
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OFFICIAL Washington doesn鈥檛 deal with sex very well. In fact, it doesn鈥檛 deal
very well with conception or fetuses or abortion or anything to do with human
reproduction.
With sex, perhaps it鈥檚 understandable. Nobody likes to get caught with their
pants down, and one gets the sense that many in Washington are loath to lambaste
the President for his dalliances lest the harsh public spotlight be shone into
their own bedrooms. Just ask Dan Burton, the Republican representative for
Indiana who earlier this month found himself reading in the Los Angeles
Times and The Washington Post about a child he had fathered out of
wedlock more than a decade ago.
But things are no better when it comes to conception and contraception. It鈥檚
as if the government would like to pretend that such tawdry subjects just didn鈥檛
need any attention. For example, when a fertility clinic in northern Virginia
announced it had developed a new technique for sorting human sperm, thereby
enhancing a couple鈥檚 ability to select the gender of their offspring, the Food
and Drug Administration didn鈥檛 have a word to say. Why? Because the FDA doesn鈥檛
regulate fertility clinics in this country.
And if the clinic鈥檚 research is promising, will the National Institutes of
Health jump in with funding for it? No, because Congress has forbidden the NIH
to fund almost anything aimed at creating human embryos.
Of course, the reason reproductive biology is such a hot potato is abortion.
The self-described Right to Life movement has declared that life begins with
conception, and any attempt to tamper with the 鈥渦nborn child鈥� is either
murderous or monstrous. Even though opinion polls show that this is a minority
viewpoint, the rhetoric, while extreme, is compelling, and few want to risk
being called a murderer today for some research benefit in the faraway
future.
Once the Congress has decided what to do to Clinton following Kenneth Starr鈥檚
report, it would seem possible that sex will be something that is only whispered
about in Washington for some time to come.
THE US Congress is not immune to star power. When the actor Christopher
Reeves went to Congress to lobby on behalf of spinal cord research after he had
been injured in a riding accident, he got a friendly hearing. You can be certain
that if Madonna made a pitch for breast-feeding, congressmen would pay
attention.
But what scientist has that kind of star power? The answer, it seems, is Jim
Watson. When the Republican senator Ted Stevens of Alaska wanted to restore some
$17 million or so to the budget of the National Human Genome Research
Institute to keep the Human Genome Project rolling along, he invited Watson to
attend the 鈥渕ark-up,鈥� the session where the appropriations committee votes on
the specifics of the appropriations bill. When it was his turn to speak, Stevens
made a big show of introducing Watson to the committee, praising his scientific
prowess, reminding his colleagues that Watson had once headed the genome
project, and further informing them that Watson felt it was one of biological
science鈥檚 most important endeavours.
Did Stevens get the extra money? It鈥檚 not certain yet, but by all accounts,
Watson鈥檚 star turn made it a lot more likely.