Watch out Ecuador, we're coming to take your spot

If you had any doubt that the Bush regime seems determined to make the U.S. a Second World country, then consider that some of our best scientists, especially those conducting research in fields like stem cells, are increasingly moving to other nations, where they feel they can do their work unfettered by religious fanatics persuading the legislature to pass laws limiting, if not outright banning, their research.

The AP reports: “Singapore's siren song is growing increasingly more irresistible for scientists, especially stem cell researchers who feel stifled by the U.S. government's restrictions on their field.

Two prominent California scientists are the latest to defect to the Asian city-state, announcing earlier this month that they, too, had fallen for its glittering acres of new laboratories outfitted with the latest gizmos.”

(snip)

"I am absolutely amazed at what they have. It's just knock-dead gorgeous," said Dr. Judith Swain, a University of California, San Diego, heart researcher who will decamp to Singapore in September to run the country's new Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences at a state-funded research wonderland called Biopolis.

Swain's husband, Dr. Edward Holmes, who is dean of the UCSD medical school and a ranking official with California's stem cell agency, is also going to Singapore to work as a government researcher.”

This is in addition, of course, to GOP moves to prevent serious discussion, never mind research, into global warming, and the continuing drive to put “intelligent design” into the classrooms, to be taught on a par with evolution.

It really makes me wonder what this country's scientific community is going to look like in a few years.

We've already lost much of our manufacturing base, which paid decent salaries to blue collar workers, and wages overall are being driven down. Now we are in danger of losing a solid scientific community to innovate and discover things that could make our lives better.

If Bush and his cronies have their way, the U.S. will be transformed into a nation filled with unskilled and unsophisticated consumers, happily shopping at Wal-mart after a long day of work toiling at the local, er, Wal-mart.