PERHAPS it was something in the air. After five years of sitting on the sidelines while national security issues dominated the US political arena, 2006 was the year science suddenly mattered again.
Take climate change, for instance. The long and painful recovery of hurricane-devastated New Orleans and the Al Gore-fronted documentary An Inconvenient Truth alerted many Americans to the dangers of global warming. This helped to trigger a seismic shift in Republican politics when California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger publicly broke with President Bush鈥檚 party line and signed into law the toughest restrictions on carbon emissions in the country.
But it was life science, not climate science, that rocked the White House to its foundations this year. In the US as a whole the November midterm elections were seen as a referendum on the war in Iraq, but the big issue in Missouri was a ballot to alter the state鈥檚 constitution and enshrine scientists鈥� freedom to pursue stem cell research without fear of criminal charges. The campaign before the vote was a complicated interplay of earnest ethical and economic debates mixed with old-fashioned hardball politics. In the end, Missourians not only supported the stem cell ballot but also elected Democratic candidate Claire McCaskill to the Senate after she made support for stem cell research a campaign issue.
Advertisement
The Missouri vote made all the difference. Democrats now control the Senate by one seat. And a big margin of victory in the House of Representatives means Nancy Pelosi (below) is the speaker. She too has promised to widen federal funding for stem cell research. The Democrats鈥� power may also force the White House to compromise on energy and the environment.