LTTE: Sarah Palin's belief in creationism and how it impacts the local economy

In the Alaska governor's race, Palin has said that she would favor evolution taught alongside creationism. Why does this matter to Bucks County?

The theory of evolution is a critical foundation for the study of modern genetics and disease transmission. If evolution is fallacious, then the basis for advances in genomics and drug development to counter changes (mutations) in bacteria or viral diseases (think reformulations of the flu shot) is also flawed. The Bucks County economy is highly dependent on the science that enables the pharmaceutical industry to continually develop new drugs. Understanding the basis for how diseases change is critical towards administering public health and controlling disease transmission. Teaching the next generation unscientific nostrums will deprive the pharmaceutical industry of its next-generation workforce and lead to a demise in our competitiveness in the global pharmaceutical market.

In a broader sense, this equivocation about evolution is an assault on our capabilities to look at the world around us, study the facts, and organize them rationally. No doubt that should Palin become elected, she will govern with similar appeals to irrationality.

Unlike Wasilla, Alaska, with a high school graduation of 58%, Bucks County with a college graduation rate of 87% has the intelligence not to elect an official that refuses to believe in science.

even if alongside evolution and accepted scientific theories would lead to... a denial of science and scientific progress. How can the US competently compete in the sciences and engineering without an understanding of the basis of scientific thought over the past 200 years?

I was on vacation a couple of weeks ago in LA and I visited Griffith Observatory. While enthralled by its exhibits, I was thinking to myself that if creationists were to make laws, in the long run places such as Griffith would be closed down.