In a McCain-Palin administration, we will also fully fund the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. To his great credit, it was President Gerald Ford who signed the legislation that became the IDEA — establishing new standards of respect and inclusion for young Americans with disabilities. From that day to this, however, the federal government’s obligations under the IDEA have not been adequately met. And portions of IDEA funding have actually decreased since 2005.

This is a matter of how we prioritize the money that we spend. We’ve got a three trillion dollar budget, and Congress spends some 18 billion dollars a year on earmarks for political pet projects. That’s more than the shortfall to fully fund the IDEA. And where does a lot of that earmark money end up? It goes to projects having little or nothing to do with the public good — things like fruit fly research in Paris, France, I kid you not. Or a public policy center named for the guy who got the earmark. In our administration, we’re going to reform and refocus. We’re going to get our federal priorities straight, and fulfill our country’s commitment to give every child opportunity and hope in life.

For many parents of children with disabilities, the most valuable thing of all is information. Early identification of a cognitive or other disorder, especially autism, can make a life-changing difference. That’s why we’re going to strengthen NIH. We’re going to work on long-term cures, and in the short-term, we’re going to work on giving these families better information.

So what is this fruit fly thing?

What she was specifically speaking about was a research program studying a species of fruit fly, the olive fruit fly Bactrocera oleae, that is a major pest to the olive industry. The fly is native to Europe and is a recent invader to California where it threatens the California olive industry with significant damages. The fly oviposits its eggs in young olives where the larvae proceed to eat the fruit, pupate inside the olives and then eat their way out.

Representing his constituents in California, including the olive growers, Rep. Mike Thompson sought $748,000 in an earmark to research this invasive pest:

The Olive Fruit Fly has infested thousands of California olive groves and is the single largest threat to the U.S. olive and olive oil industries,” he said. “I secured $748,000 for olive fruit fly research and irradiation in the (fiscal year 2008) appropriations bill for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The USDA will use some of that funding for their research facility in France. This USDA research facility is located in France because Mediterranean countries like France have dealt with the Olive Fruit Fly for decades, while California has only been exposed since the late 1990s. This is not uncommon; the USDA has several international research facilities throughout the world, including Australia, China and Argentina.”

So this is not some major pork earmark, but rather a rational applied research issue that could have real economic impact on the counties in California where olive production is big (Napa County’s second largest cash crop.) Adding the Paris, France bit to her statement was, in my opinion, a cheap shot, since it is for research at a USDA facility.

Why do the research funding as an earmark? Well maybe we should ask Governor Palin who sought and received earmarks for Alaskan based research into such issues as Bering Sea King Crab Research and Management and Seal and Steller Sea Lion Biological Research. Getting funding for research through the regular channels (NSF, NIH, NOAA) has gotten pretty tight in recent years and one way to get (or increase) the funding received is to go through direct earmarks from the state and federal levels. Most often these are programs with a demonstrable potential payoff for the local area or the entire nation. That was the case with the red crab studies and with the olive fruit fly study. Each has the potential to advance our knowledge about an organism important to humans, red crab as a food that is hopefully a sustainable fishery and the olive fruit fly as a pest that is hopefully controllable. These (along with the bear DNA, the 3 million dollar projector and many other programs) are not pork, or wasteful earmarks, but are good science with direct application to real world issues for Real Americans™.

It gets worse though

Even scarier though is that Governor Palin used the generic term “fruit flies” which in science research generally refers to the wine or vinegar fruit flies of the Drosophila genus, the most commonly studied probably being Drosophila melanogaster. This genus of flies is the subject of a large number of studies. So many that I would hate to count them without Google Scholar to help! Ironically, every student that takes freshman biology will spend time studying Drosophila, as they were instrumental in the discovery of chromosomes and genes as basis of heredity by Thomas Hunt Morgan.

They are still used today as a model organism for genetics research. They have a short life span (~30 days), with high reproduction rates, so many generations can be produced in a short time. It also has only four chromosomes which was great help in early work. The genome of Drosophila melanogaster was completely sequenced in 2000, only the second animal to have its genome completely sequenced behind another common model organism, the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans.

So why is it scary? Because the fruit fly (Drosophila) has been instrumental in research on many human diseases including Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, and Alzheimer’s, diabetes, oxidative stress, and cancer. But more to the point of Gov. Palin’s speech, Drosophila has been at the center of many studies into autism (a great vid there about autism and fruit fly research), Rett syndrome, and Down syndrome. Yep, the very diseases she is wanting to cure.

“…That’s why we’re going to strengthen NIH. We’re going to work on long-term cures…”

Ok, I like the strengthen NIH part, but since Gov. Palin was ridiculing studies on “fruit flies”, I’m going to assume that was not meant as a way of increasing funding across the board for science. In which case (and even if it was), earmark type funding would still be needed for research programs such as the olive fruit fly study. You want to find cures for diseases, you have to fund the science to research them including using model organisms such as fruit flies. Of course now Gov. Palin has made this election a very personal issue for every single one of those researchers that work with fruit flies. Add them to the bear researchers, science educators and astronomers… It seems like McCain and Palin are trying to drive away the science community for all they’re worth.

Majestic Cheetah
Originally uploaded by eclectic echoes.

The majestic cheetah from the Zoo in Providence, RI. It was a hot and humid day there and he was pacing restlessly. The screen and scratchud up plexi (scratched from the human side!) in the viewing area was a bit of a pain for photography, but I did get a couple of good shots. Surprising how many people were saying “oh, look at the pretty Leopard” especially when there were 2 signs proclaiming the species in 8 inch tall type in white on black. Oh well….

This shot ended up with a nice discussion about cheetahs as well as the role of zoos and aquariums. If you don’t have a flickr account I would be interested in hearing your views in the comments here.