By Barbara Forrest

There are times when the irony of life is so thick that one has to just stand back and marvel at it. Now is one of those times in Louisiana. June 25, 2010, marked exactly two years to the day since Gov. Bobby Jindal signed the creationist Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA). Now, with coastal wildlife trapped and dying in sludge, with the human beings of the Gulf Coast facing the loss of culture, livelihoods, and our beautiful wetlands — courtesy of BP — Gov. Jindal felt called to set aside June 27 as an official day of prayer for divine assistance in “persevering” through this mess — and to post the call to prayer on his official state website. In 2008, his constituents couldn’t even get him to acknowledge the letters he got from scientists and citizens who asked him to veto the LSEA. But now, with the Gulf of Mexico hemorrhaging oil, he was only too happy to sign an official proclamation declaring a “Statewide Day of Prayer for Perseverance Through Oil Spill Crisis” [pdf]. The irony of this is as thick as the oil in the Gulf.

UPDATE, June 29, 2010: Hat tip to Bill Berkowitz in his guest commentary for Buzzflash.com, “Praying Away the Oil, BP’s Oil-Spewing Disaster: It’s God’s Message to America, Conservative Christian Evangelicals Say.” Berkowitz seems to have found the explanation for the official prayer vigil on June 27 at Charisma Magazine‘s News Online: “Governors Declare Day of Prayer for Gulf Spill.” The Charisma article confirms that David Barton drafted the basic prayer proclamation, which the governors of Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi could adapt for their states. It also quotes Cindy Jacobs, co-founder of the U.S. Reformation Prayer Network, who has been coordinating prayer efforts. Jacobs’ belief about the cause of the oil spill seems to shed some light on Gene Mills’ strange assessment (see below) of the oil gusher as the “second spiritual assault” on New Orleans:

Jacobs believes the oil spill is more than a natural disaster but partly the result of greed, debauchery on the beaches, poor environmental stewardship and a lack of U.S. support for Israel—all issues her network has been repenting of since the leak began.

‘Whenever there’s violent weather or some things like this, you have to ask if it’s just a natural disaster or if you’re reaping something that’s been sown,’ she said. ‘We feel this is a cumulative thing.’

Resume original post:

The official praying actually started on Monday, June 21, in the Memorial Hall (front lobby) of the Louisiana State Capitol, as we are informed by the Louisiana Family Forum, which distributed the governor’s official proclamation [pdf]. (Are we surprised?) According to the LFF’s June 22, 2010, Family Facts newsletter, “lawmakers, pastors, and intercessors joined Representative Regina Barrow, Senator Sharon Broome, and Governor Bobby Jindal  for a Prayer Vigil concerning the Deepwater Horizon Oil Explosion.” Also prominently featured in the LFF’s newsletter is a picture of Jindal undergoing the laying on of hands (the hands are unidentified). The Family Facts article also notes that “Governor Jindal read Psalms 146.” (See the LFF’s YouTube video of the 2007 pre-inaugural Christmas gala that LFF threw for him, at which he likewise underwent the laying on of hands in front of hundreds of attendees, with Rev. Mills presiding [at 2:17].)

It is ironic that Jindal could not squeeze into his schedule even one personal response to the Louisiana citizens, scientists, and teachers who implored him to protect the teaching of science in the state’s public schools. Yet he always seems to be available for the LFF’s political-religious photo ops, such as its 2009 Annual Legislative Awards Banquet, at which the LFF gives awards to Louisiana legislators who vote their way. So his finding room in his schedule for the prayer photo op is entirely typical of the way Jindal allots his gubernatorial time. The LFF asks, and the LFF receives. (See the Baton Rouge Advocate’s excellent June 28 editorial, “Bible Frauds on the March,” about the LFF’s power over the Louisiana legislature.)

The fact that people would turn to prayer is not surprising. Devout residents all along the Gulf Coast are understandably turning to anything they think will help. A good deal of prayer has been prompted in Louisiana in recent years by the well-known catastrophes that have blown in from the Gulf of Mexico. When people face losing everything they love, prayer is a source of hope and comfort. However, the irony of our anti-science governor signing a prayer proclamation when he would not sign his name to protect the teaching of science is a bit much. Yet it is to be expected in light of the fact that Jindal has thrown in lock, stock, and barrel with the extreme Religious Right. Vetoing the LSEA in 2008 would have meant breaking ranks with Louisiana Family Forum (LFF) director Rev. Gene Mills, who — being as much a political operative as a man of the cloth — is one of Jindal’s unofficial right-hand men. Mills orchestrated the passage of the LSEA. (See “Holy Warriors,” Jeremy Alford’s informative May 26, 2010, story on Mills and the LFF.)

As it turns out — unsurprisingly — Mills also announced that he orchestrated the drafting of the prayer proclamation (which is posted on the governor’s official website). He says that Louisianians have not prayed enough about the oil catastrophe. In his June 24, 2010, e-mail to LFF supporters, he observed that despite the fact that “America has assembled the brightest minds, the newest technology and America’s finest for 65 consecutive days to seal this breach in the Gulf of Mexico,” we have “failed to . . . corporately ‘pause and pray’ and admit that our efforts are futile without the assistance of the Almighty!” So an official proclamation from the governor was needed. (Note the additional irony of the double-entendre in Mills’s exhortation that Louisianians must “corporately” pray that God will help us get rid of BP’s oily deluge.) In a remark aimed directly at other ministers, Mills divulges that he had help in drafting the proclamation:

Pastors, I requested that Governor Jindal initiate this call and have been assisted by David Barton of Wallbuilders, Tony Perkins of Family Research Council and others in crafting the proclamation and implementing its directive.

Most readers have heard of Tony Perkins, a former Louisiana state legislator who helped found the LFF and now wages nation-wide culture war from Washington, DC, as head of the Family Research Council. (Perkins pulled some creationist shenanigans of his own during his time in the legislature.) But David Barton, a Republican political operative in Texas who poses as a historian, is less recognizable in Louisiana. Barton founded Wallbuilders, an organization devoted to “presenting America’s forgotten history and heroes with an emphasis on our moral, religious, and constitutional heritage” — in other words, he spreads Religious Right propaganda about the Founding Fathers. (Rob Boston of Americans United for Separation of Church and State exposed Barton’s pseudo-scholarship almost twenty years ago. See “Sects, Lies and Videotape: David Barton’s Distorted History.”)

Barton was one of the “expert” reviewers whom the far-right contingent of the Texas Board of Education selected to screw up the Texas history standards earlier this year. (Boston points out Barton’s “credentials” for this task: “Barton earned a bachelor’s degree in ‘Christian Education’ from Oral Roberts University in 1976 and later taught math and science at a fundamentalist Christian school founded by his father.” See also the extensive information on Barton at Texas Freedom Network’s excellent TFN Insider blog.)

It turns out that Barton is also a buddy of Bobby Jindal. He accompanied Jindal on a campaign tour of Baptist churches in North Louisiana in October 2006, after which Jindal was a guest (two days in a row) on Barton’s Wallbuilders Live! radio program. Jindal gushed to the audience about what a knowledgeable historian Barton is. (See “Governor Jindal’s Friends in Low Places” here.) So Jindal reveals that he is not only anti-science but — through his chummy association with Barton — anti-history as well. Mills’ partnering with Barton on the Louisiana prayer proclamation simply continues the close working relationship that exists among Jindal, Barton, Perkins, and Mills himself.

So Rev. Mills pulled together his divinely inspired effort to protect the Gulf Coast. Actually, ten days after the rig explosion, in his April 30, 2010, End of Week newsletter, he had already issued a call to prayer — which included a weird, ambiguous comment about a “spiritual assault” on New Orleans:

It is not coincidental that this event occurred at precisely the point Katrina tracked and struck its destructive blow to New Orleans. This second spiritual assault warrants that we “Cry Out for success in the Gulf!” [Katrina link is Mills'.]

Next, in a call for fasting as well, he provided a prayer, which, among other things, asked God to inflict the oil on someone else (look out Cuba!):

As we are led by the Holy Spirit, let us pray…

• For God’s hand upon His creation, the land, the sea, and the winds. “Father, direct and command prevailing winds to move southward. We call forth the green grass of our wetlands to thrive and flourish!” [underlining added]

Now for the final irony: Almost two months later, in his June 4 End of Week newsletter, “Drills, Spills, and Bills” (in which he updates readers on his lobbying successes at the Capitol), Mills is defending BP against the prospect of prosecution. Referring indirectly to the Obama administration’s announcement that there will be a criminal investigation, he makes no mention of the fact that eleven human beings — husbands, dads, sons, brothers, buddies — are dead because of BP — twelve if you count the recent, tragic suicide of Alabama fisherman Allen “Rookie” Kruse. And domestic violence calls have tripled in beautiful little Bayou La Batre, Alabama. (Family values, anyone?) But Mills is concerned about BP’s stock ratings:

[Obama's] policy decisions to close drilling and proceed with criminal investigations appear counter-intuitive, calculated, and politically theatrical. BP’s stock fell dramatically within minutes of the criminal investigation announcement! How will Louisiana subrogate against an [sic] bankrupt BP?

Obama has repeatedly charged BP with withholding information… does he really expect they will suddenly be forthcoming with all the latest intelligence now that their every word and action may be used against them in Congressional Investigation?  This is all a sad show for the media and the American people to avoid culpability. May God have mercy on our coast!

There isn’t much else to say after this revelation, is there? Except to recall — once again — that, under the governorship of Bobby Jindal, Gene Mills is calling the shots on Louisiana science education policy. Have mercy, indeed.

— Rev. Gene Mills, Louisiana Family Forum

Hammond Daily Star, 4/11/08

Update 6/1/10: The photo above is linked to Focus on the Family’s YouTube interview of Rev. Mills. In this interview, he explains that God is working through him in the Louisiana Family Forum’s public policy initiatives:

FOF Interviewer: What keeps you motivated? . . . What keeps you in the fight? What gives you energy?

Rev. Mills: You know, I find my inspiration in scripture, where it says that God’s purposes are found in me, and I best accomplish it when I’m expressing that witness or providing that testimony to those who need to know. And this is one way in which I can fulfill that basic life purpose — is expressing truth in the arenas where it doesn’t often go, including the public policy arena.

By Barbara Forrest

Ever since the Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA) was introduced and subsequently enacted into law in 2008, the Louisiana Family Forum (LFF), which “drafted and promoted” the bill, has sworn to high heaven (so to speak), that this legislation had not a thing to do with religion. The above statement by Rev. Gene Mills in his letter to the Hammond Daily Star is the most prominent and direct denial. (Mills wrote the letter in an effort to do some quick damage control after Sen. Ben Nevers told the newspaper that he introduced the bill because the LFF thought that “scientific data related to creationism should be discussed [in public schools] when dealing with Darwin’s theory.”) A year after penning this denial, Mills told Gambit Weekly pretty much the same thing. According to GW,

The bill’s original creator, the Louisiana Family Forum (LFF), a self-described ‘voice for traditional families in Louisiana,’ insists the new law is religiously neutral. According to the Rev. Gene Mills, the group’s director, ‘As written, it’s bulletproof.’ [bold added]

But as an analysis [pdf] of the LSEA shows, and as Mills himself later confirmed in a way that leaves no doubt, the Louisiana Science Education Act is all about religion.

In December 2008-January 2009, Mills was busily attempting — successfully, as it turned out — to gut the policy that had been proposed for Bulletin 741, the Louisiana Handbook for School Administrators, which would govern the implementation of the LSEA in public schools. As drafted by the Louisiana Dept. of Education [pdf], the policy would have specifically prohibited teachers from (1) promoting religion under the guise of teaching “critical thinking” and (2) supplementing the curriculum with “materials that teach creationism or intelligent design or that advance the religious belief that a supernatural being created humankind.” These were precisely the parts of the policy to which Mills objected, as he told the Lafayette Daily Advertiser in January 2009:

Gene Mills of the Louisiana Family Forum, a conservative Christian group that supported the law, said . . . that he was unhappy with some of the policy language prepared for discussion at a December [2008] meeting of the BESE committee. . . . Mills declined to discuss his specific objections. ‘I would just summarize it this way,’ he said. ‘I would think that it left religious neutrality and took a tone of religious hostility. Or at least it could be interpreted by some to have done that.’ [bold added]

Mills wanted the two above prohibitions removed from the policy, and the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) unanimously gave him what he wanted. But consider his reason: he interpreted a justifiable attempt to prevent religious beliefs from being taught to children as science in public schools as hostility to religion. Why would he have taken this position if the LSEA were not an attempt to promote religion? The answer is, of course, that he would have no reason to object unless the LSEA were precisely an attempt to promote religion.

An even more important — and directly relevant — question is why a minister who homeschools his younger children and sends his older ones to a private Christian high school is so concerned about what is going on in public schools. (Mills publicized his children’s educational arrangements in his December 2008 “Christmas Letter” to his supporters.) He is so concerned, in fact, that he successfully commandeered the policy governing what other people’s children are being taught about science in public schools. The answer to this latter question is clear: Rev. Gene Mills, who does not allow public schools to educate his own children, nonetheless wants to use public education — and the public policymaking process — to carry out LFF’s mission:

Our Mission is to persuasively present biblical principles in the centers of influence.

The Religious Right has long seen public schools as an important center of influence for indoctrinating young minds. (Texas is a perfect example. See here and here.) Anyone who doubts that religion is Mills’ explicit motivation need only consult the list [pdf] of 2010 bills that LFF asked its supporters to follow in the legislature. Bills in which the LFF has an interest are grouped into categories. The final category, under which four bills are listed, is entitled “Biblical Worldview” [pdf].

The wording of the LSEA itself reflects the LFF’s and its co-author, the Discovery Institute’s, preoccupation with religion. The legislation stipulates that the LSEA “shall not be construed to promote any religious doctrine, promote discrimination for or against a particular set of religious beliefs, or promote discrimination for or against religion or nonreligion.” (This wording comes straight from the Discovery Institute’s “Model Academic Freedom Statute on Evolution.”) The façade of religious neutrality in the disclaimer is just that — a façade. If religious neutrality were truly the goal, there need be no mention of religion in the legislation at all. Legislation intended only to enhance the teaching of science requires no religious disclaimer. Including it in the LSEA is merely the LFF’s and the Discovery Institute’s transparent attempt at pre-emptive legal self-defense. People who are not trying to sneak religion into public institutions can simply remain silent on the subject. But the creationists at the LFF and the Discovery Institute hath protested a bit too much for their disavowals of religious intent to be credible.

This is nothing new, however. Creationists always talk too much, and Rev. Mills is no exception. He, like all Religious Right leaders, has no choice. He must constantly reassure LFF’s supporters (aka financial donors and foot soldiers who help them lobby legislators) that LFF is toiling in the halls of the Capitol doing the Lord’s work. So in his December 22, 2009, Christmas e-newsletter, an excerpt of which is below (with color highlighting added here for emphasis), Rev. Mills provided a list of the LFF’s accomplishments, which included the successful commandeering of the BESE policy governing implementation of the LSEA. And he made it very clear that the real credit for this accomplishment goes to . . .  Jesus Christ.

‘Now to him who is able to do exceedingly and abundantly beyond all that we can hope or imagine, according to the power which works in us.’ — Ephesians 2:20

‘Now to Him‘ –Isn’t that the authentically real reason for this season? Jesus’ birth—the Advent— and even the vision placed in the hearts of the founders of Louisiana Family Forum was inspired by ‘Him!’ We celebrate ‘Him‘ individually and organizationally!

‘Who is able’—Because of Him, LFF’s accomplishments are many in 2009:

• Crafted the only congressional redistricting plan under consideration,
• Fought for and won the largest tax rollback for families in Louisiana history,
• Fought for and won the health professional’s Rights of Conscience Protections, and
• Advanced classroom-ready Louisiana Science Education Rules through the perilous State Board of Education process!
  

Rev. Mills has exaggerated just a bit here. There was nothing “perilous” in the LFF’s advancing those “classroom-ready” rules for implementing the LSEA. Courtesy of the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, taking control of BESE’s LSEA policy was a freaking cakewalk, as the Baton Rouge Advocate clearly recognized:

The list of the weak-kneed on this issue gets longer and longer every time it is discussed. Not only the BESE members but state Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek acquiesced in the lobbying from creationism backers such as the Louisiana Family Forum. The latter is a particularly influential backer of Jindal. Three members of the 11-member BESE are Jindal appointees.

BESE joins the ranks of the wimps who have rolled over on the issue of creationism.

In the Christmas newsletter, Mills also informed readers that LFF had learned from a survey of its supporters what “God’s Spirit moved” them to ask the LFF to include on its “to do” list for 2010. God had moved LFF’s supporters to request that it “double LFF’s pastors network,” “recruit and train citizen activists,” and “grow [LFF's] legislative team.” He signed off by reminding readers of an important, looming deadline:

P.P.S. Year end gifts will be graciously received until midnight December 31st.

So there you have it, fellow citizens. Jesus is the reason for the season — and for BESE’s unanimous decision to give control of science education policy to Rev. Gene Mills.

To increase high school students’ exposure to evolutionary theory prior to their enrolling in a college biology course, a high school biology teacher in Louisiana could request to show his/her students Judgment Day. The program appears to meet the ‘supplemental instructional materials’ criterion of the Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA). Certainly we would argue that viewing Judgment Day ‘promotes critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories’ . . . by its thoughtful coverage of the information presented by witness[es] for both the plaintiffs and defendants. Although the LSEA has all the appearances of a stealth creationism document . . . , it does not prohibit a high school biology teacher from requesting to supplement the standard textbook with high-quality scientific material such as Judgment Day.

The above passage is an excerpt from an article by Dr. Beth Leuck, Professor of Biology, and Dr. Greg Butcher, Assistant Professor of Neuroscience, colleagues at Centenary College of Louisiana, in the November/December 2009 Reports of the National Center for Science Education. Entitled “The Effect of Viewing NOVA’s Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial Docudrama on College Students’ Perceptions of ‘Intelligent Design’ and Evolution,” their article describes the results of Leuck and Butcher’s survey of Centenary biology students’ attitudes toward evolution and intelligent design (ID) creationism both before and after viewing this PBS NOVA documentary (video below) about the legal case of Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District 2005 (see below).

After viewing the original broadcast ourselves, we decided that Judgment Day offered an educational and entertaining account of the theory of evolution and of a contemporary ‘evolution war’ to which college biology students should be exposed. Therefore, we decided to show the program to students in Centenary College of Louisiana’s Biology 101 class (Principles and Methods of Biology) to supplement the section on evolution that students had just completed.

The article is online here (html). It is downloadable in pdf here (with the kind permission of Dr. Leuck and Dr. Butcher).

The results that Leuck and Butcher observed in student attitudes after showing Judgment Day were remarkable. Before viewing the documentary, slightly more than 40% of the students disagreed with the statement, “Intelligent design is a scientific explanation for the history of life on earth.” After viewing the program, 60% of them disagreed. Whereas slightly over 20% weren’t sure before the program, only about 4% were uncertain after viewing it.

Leuck & Butcher Figure 1

The results showed that when students are offered truthful, understandable information, they are able to see the difference clearly between evolution, which is a robust scientific explanation of the history of life on Earth, and intelligent design, which is nothing more than a retread of traditional creationism that lacks scientific support. As Leuck and Butcher observed, “In the end, 70% of the students who watched Judgment Day believed that there are no scientifically valid data supporting ‘intelligent design’.”

Judgment Day, the Peabody Award-winning NOVA documentary about the case of Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District 2005, “the Dover trial,” was first broadcast on November 13, 2007. Kitzmiller was the first legal case involving intelligent design creationism. Eleven parents in Dover, Pennsylvania, filed suit after the Dover school board adopted a policy requiring biology teachers at Dover Regional High School to read a disclaimer to their students before teaching evolution. Intended to undermine students’ acceptance of evolution, the disclaimer instructed students that, among other things, “The Theory [of evolution] is not a fact. Gaps in the Theory exist for which there is no evidence.” The board also purchased 60 copies of an intelligent design creationist textbook, Of Pandas and People, for placement in the school library as a “reference” book for students interested in learning more about intelligent design. (As an expert witness for the plaintiffs, I wrote both an expert witness report [pdf] about the ID creationist movement and a supplementary report [pdf] about Pandas.)

The Kitzmiller case was ultimately the fruit of the relentless promotion of intelligent design by the Discovery Institute, the creationist think tank that later helped write the 2008 Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA) and sent representatives to argue for its passage before the Louisiana House Education Committee on May 21, 2008. Despite the fact that the trial had exposed ID as creationism and that its proponents’ arguments had been shredded in court by the expert witnesses and attorneys for the plaintiffs, the Discovery Institute — partnering with the Louisiana Family Forum — subsequently targeted Louisiana for passage of a version of its deceptively named “Model Academic Freedom Statute on Evolution.” Their scheme worked: with the passage of the Louisiana Science Education Act in 2008, our state became a victim of the Discovery Institute’s devious “Wedge Strategy” and the Louisiana Family Forum’s successful campaign to commandeer public school science education policy in order to advance its theocratic agenda.

By showing Judgment Day, Leuck and Butcher achieved notable results in dispelling students’ misinformation about evolution and their misconception of ID as science. (In addition to information about the trial, the program features excellent explanations of the science supporting evolution, illustrated by state-of-the-art animations.) They recommend that both Louisiana public school teachers and university professors show this documentary to their students:

Adding Judgment Day to classroom units on evolution at both the high school and college level may be particularly important in states like Louisiana that have a history of resistance to scientific explanations of the origin of life on earth.

Although the Louisiana Science Education Act was promoted and passed in order to allow creationist materials into Louisiana science classes, as its legislative sponsor Sen. Ben Nevers admitted, public school science teachers already had the freedom to supplement their instruction with quality materials that tell students the truth about evolution. Judgment Day tells the truth not only about evolution, but about what happens to communities and the educational process when creationists are permitted to push their divisive agenda at the expense of children.

The people of Louisiana should take this lesson to heart. As more of our children leave the state to seek opportunities elsewhere, they will encounter the fact that people who know about this law view the state as a laughingstock. This is what our fellow Americans see, rather than the efforts of dedicated teachers and scientists who quietly do their jobs every day. We should not want our children — all too many of whom will leave, and have already left, Louisiana for better opportunities elsewhere — to bear the burden of the ignorance of the public officials who assisted in the passage of the LSEA and the policies governing its implementation. (See “Louisiana Open for Business — Creationists Welcome” here.)

To facilitate the preview of the film by public school teachers and science professors who might wish to show it to their students, we offer it below in its entirety.

This website is normally devoted to providing information about the teaching of evolution and the fight against creationism in Louisiana and related topics. However, important science-related issues sometimes arise that our readers should know about. The following is one of those issues, and there is a lesson in it for Louisiana:  three Italian scientists — Elena Cattaneo of the University of Milan, Elisabetta Cerbai of the University of Florence, and Silvia Garagna of the University of Pavia — are fighting a legal battle in the Italian courts to win the right to apply for government funding of human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research, which is legal in Italy. These scientists have taken on this fight at their own expense, and they could use some help.  Their bravery in defending science is a lesson for the people of Louisiana, a state in which standing up to defend science is a actually a liability in the eyes of public officials (see also here).

Here is the background (this discussion will come back around to Louisiana — so please keep reading!): In March 2009, I had the privilege of participating in the Second World Congress for Freedom of Scientific Research in Brussels, Belgium. (Here is the abstract of my paper.) The Congress is held every two years by the Nonviolent Radical Party and the Luca Coscioni Association (LCA) for Freedom of Scientific Research, which is named in honor of its president and founder, Luca Coscioni. Mr. Coscioni died in 2006 from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) after suffering for ten years. The LCA promotes the right of scientists to do potentially lifesaving research such as hESC research. (See my July 2009 articles in the Hammond, LA, Daily Star on the LCA website. PDFs of originals here [7/24/09] and here [7/29/09].)

At the Brussels meeting, I attended presentations by scientists such as Stephen Minger, who does hESC research in the United Kingdom. Minger’s research group created the first human stem cell line in the UK, which was deposited in the UK Stem Cell Bank for the benefit of other scientists. (See “U.K. Stem Cell Policy – A Civic Scientist’s Journey through Regulation” [pdf] and Minger’s February 2009 address [video] at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University. This presentation is essentially the same one he gave in Brussels.)

I also heard NBC news correspondent Charles Sabine speak of his father’s tragic death from Huntington’s Disease, from which Sabine, too, will die. He just doesn’t know when it will strike him. His brother — a brilliant, Oxford-educated lawyer — has already been stricken. I had the honor of talking to Mr. Sabine during our bus ride to one of the Brussels sessions. (See the 2009 National Public Radio story on Sabine here. See also, “I Will Die the Most Horrible Death,” in the August 2009 Guardian here. See Sabine talking about his ordeal here [video also embedded at the end of this post]. See here a whole series of videos of Sabine, including his presentation of “The Legacy and the Hope: Huntington’s Disease,” which is a version of the talk he gave in Brussels.)

I also had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Elena Cattaneo, a neuroscientist who conducts stem cell research related to Huntington’s Disease. (See her appeal for contributions to fund the search for a cure here. Video also embedded at the end of this post.) Dr. Cattaneo and Charles Sabine are friends. Together they are working to get Mr. Sabine’s message to as many people as possible about the importance of human embryonic stem cell research — Sabine is literally pleading for this research to continue while he is still able to speak and to travel. While there is no guarantee that stem cell research will produce a cure for Huntington’s Disease, the potential of finding lifesaving cures for a host of genetic diseases like Huntington’s is so promising that scientists around the world are committed to it. (See this 2006 report from the National Institutes of Health. See this November 2009 article about the progress that has already been made using stem cell therapies.) But Dr. Cattaneo has a BIG problem: while hESC research is legal in Italy, the Italian government has denied her and other researchers the right to submit proposals for government research funding. Eurostemcell, a European consortium of stem cell researchers, issued a joint statement [pdf] in July 2007 concerning the obstacles to hESC in Italy:

In Italy, it is legal to work on already-established human embryonic stem (hES) cell lines from frozen discarded embryos but it is illegal to derive new hES cell lines. Our scientists stand ready and able to thrive alongside the best of our European colleagues in both human embryonic and adult stem cell research. However the legal research on hES cell lines is nullified by Italy’s public funding decisions: resources for human embryonic stem cell research are denied, allocated only to research on adult stem cells. This regulatory and funding limit hinders effective collaboration in Europe by Italian labs and runs contrary to the spirit of European funding, which expects that national resources align with European ones to promote scientific progress. . . . [F]or Italy to stay in this field of research, and to secure far reaching social and economic benefits, it must also act on Italian funding and regulation. (p. 4)

Dr. Cattaneo and her colleagues were denied the right to submit research proposals when the Italian government made available eight million euros ($10,674,745.00) for stem cell research in February 2009. So they filed suit against the government in April 2009. (See the timeline of the case.) In July 2009, the first level regional tribunal ruled against them, saying that only institutions requesting funding had the right to sue the government, not individuals. According to Dr. Cattaneo, “The verdict seems to draw inspiration from an ideology more than from the law. . . . It is also shocking that as individual scientists we do not have the right to appeal against a public call for proposals that limits our freedom to do research that is legal in our country.” The world’s leading scientific journals, Nature and Science, have both taken notice and reported on this case (see Nature July 2009 and Science July 2009).

Dr. Cattaneo and her two colleagues continued their legal challenge by appealing to the State Council, only to lose again in December 2009 when the Council re-affirmed the tribunal’s ruling that only institutions have the right to sue the government. But Drs. Cattaneo, Cerbai, and Garagna are not giving up, as they stated in their February 2010 letter [pdf] in Nature: “As scientists concerned about inappropriate political interference in scientific affairs, we intend to continue the fight through the courts, even if it takes years.” After their second loss in December, their effort may indeed take years.

The problems in Italy originate with the Vatican’s opposition to most kinds of stem cell research and its influence over Italian politicians — and thus public policy. The Church had called the European Union’s 2006 decision to fund hESC research “a twisted sense of progress” (see here). When the Vatican objected to the Italian government’s funding of hESC research in 2009, politicians changed the funding policy to accommodate its objections. Nature reported that “the exclusion was added by politicians to a text [that had been] agreed [on] by a committee of scientific experts.” This change is evidence of the Church’s power over Italian politics. In fact, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, head of the Pontifical Council for the Family, said in 2006 that “Excommunication will be applied to the women, doctors and researchers who eliminate embryos [and to the] politicians that approve the law.” However, Prof. Cesare Galli, of the Laboratory of Reproductive Technologies in Cremona, who was the first scientist to clone a horse, responded to this threat and mentioned his colleague, Dr. Cattaneo:

I can bear excommunication. I was raised as a Catholic, I share Catholic values, but I am able to make my own judgment on some issues and I do not need to be told by the Church what to do or to think. I will be, together with Elena Cattaneo [a scientist working in the University of Milan] the first to be affected by the excommunication and then there are two other labs that I know using imported embryonic stem cells.

Dr. Cattaneo, also a Catholic, responded in 2008 concerning criticism from the Church:

I have presented my opinions many times before, and today I choose to be even more direct: I am a Christian and I work on embryonic stem cells, in the same way as I work on adult stem cells and in other fields that do not involve the use of embryonic stem cells. I believe I am right to work on cells that are not ‘embryo’ and obtained from a blastocyst ‘that is not yet a person.’ These cells can help us understand and hopefully contribute to diminish the suffering of many. I also have the hope that there is a God bigger than any earthbound imagination, that has no need to be asserted through dogmas. A God who allows women and men to think freely, to hope, to love, to enjoy and hold their own beliefs having diverse rhythms and forms. A God who lets humanity, individually vested with consciences and ethical tensions, continue to grow (for those that are believers) the gift it has received. A God that perhaps nurtures some love for Science. Because a God who wants to keep us in the dark and in suffering probably does not exist.  [*Go here (pdf) for her entire statement, "The Reason Why I Work with Embryonic Stem Cells,"translated from Italian.]

One would think that in the face of such formidable criticism, Dr. Cattaneo and her colleagues, Dr. Cerbai  and Dr. Garagna, would be hesitant to continue their fight — especially since they are waging this battle at their own expense. But they are undaunted. According to Dr. Cattaneo, “We have a constitutional right to appeal against a public funding call that limits our freedom to do scientifically valuable research that is legal in our country.” And they are getting support from their colleagues in other countries. Austin Smith, Director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Stem Cell Research in Cambridge, England, says, “This courageous action by three Italian scientists is a beacon to all who believe in freedom of research to advance human knowledge and understanding.”

The Luca Coscioni Association has posted a request for donations to provide reimbursements to the three scientists for their legal costs. According to the LCA,

The legal expenses for the first degree of judgement were of around 6.000,00 euro. Since the beginning of the appeal (July 7 [2009]) 7.774,79 euro (around 10.592 USD) have been raised. The three scientists have been promptly refunded (see attachments). The spare amount will help covering expenses for next step.

** Readers who would like to donate to help cover the legal expenses can do so HERE using PayPal. Any amount readers can donate will be appreciated. (This is a legitimate avenue for making the donation. Receipts of the reimbursements that have so far been given to Dr. Cattaneo and her colleagues are posted at the bottom of the page at the “HERE” link above.)

So how does all this relate to Louisiana? (Thank you for reading this far!) It highlights the fact that we have absolutely no reason to feel smug about the obstacles to scientific research in Italy — our own house is in quite a bit of disorder. Recall Stephen Minger, who helped create one of the first hESC lines in the UK. Minger recently departed King’s College London to work at GE Healthcare, where he will apply his research in the areas of drug development and toxicology. He also serves on the advisory panel of the International Stem Cell Policy Program at the prestigious James A Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University. While at King’s College, Minger helped secure licensing in the UK for research in which the nucleus of a bovine ovum is replaced by a human somatic cell nucleus in an effort to create hESC lines.

The technical difficulty and ethical constraints associated with obtaining an abundant supply of human ova make this kind of research a viable alternative if it can be made to work. (Minger explains it in the video at the link above. See also “U.K. Stem Cell Policy — A Civic Scientist’s Journey Through Regulation” [pdf]. See this article for a simple explanation of the technique and the reasoning behind this process. See also “Stem Cell Basics” at the National Institutes of Health.) There is no guarantee that this research will succeed (see this February 2009 article in New Scientist). However, if it could be made to work, there would be abundant stem cell lines that could be used in research to develop cures for Parkinson’s disease, spinal cord injuries, and other conditions. Actor Christopher Reeve was well known for promoting stem cell research after his devastating spinal cord injury. The Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation now continues Reeve’s work. Louisiana residents have traveled as far as China and Portugal to obtain expensive, unproven stem cell treatments because they need a source of hope. In the video above, Charles Sabine says, “Hope is the most important word in the world. So far they [patients] have not had that hope. But we do now have the chance if we can provide the support and the resources to the researchers.” No one with a heart could disagree with him.

Now here comes the kicker:

If Stephen Minger were doing his research in Louisiana, he would go to prison for ten years.

According to section D.1.e. of Act 108, which became law in Louisiana in 2009, Minger would be in jail and would also be subject to a $10,000 fine. Among the other procedures that Act 108 prohibits (which I am not discussing here), Section D.1.e. outlaws the creation of “(e) An embryo produced by introducing a human nucleus into a nonhuman egg.” Violators, according to Act 108, “shall be imprisoned at hard labor.” Section D.1.e. outlaws exactly the same kind of research that is presently licensed in the UK. But Act 108 is not the only anti-stem cell legislation in Louisiana. One year earlier, in 2008 (the same year in which the creationist Louisiana Science Education Act [Act 473] was passed), the state also adopted Act 486, which “prohibits public funds, including tax proceeds, funds received from the federal government, or other revenues of the state or political subdivisions thereof, from being used by any person or entity, including any state-funded institution or facility, for human somatic cell nuclear transfer.” In short, like Drs. Cattaneo, Cerbai, and Garagna, Louisiana scientists cannot secure either federal or state funding for research that is legal in the United States. Readers of this blog will not be surprised to learn that the Louisiana Family Forum was behind both Act 486 (HB 370) and Act 108 (SB 115). (The LFF gave awards at its 2009 annual legislative awards banquet to legislators who supported Act 108.)

With respect to our regressive legislation in matters concerning science, Louisiana has nothing to be proud of. But those of us who disapprove of what the legislature and the governor have done to the prospects for stem cell research in Louisiana can at least show some class and do something to help these three courageous Italian scientists. We can send money to help in their legal case, and we can spread the word on their behalf.

If you do not have time to follow all the supporting hyperlinks above, please at least take the time to watch the two videos below. In the first (5:17 min.), Charles Sabine talks about the importance of hope: “Hope is the most important word in the world.” There are pictures of his father, who died from Huntington’s Disease, his brother, who presently suffers from it, and his wife Nicole and their beautiful little daughter Breezy, who fortunately does not have the HD gene. Then watch the video of Dr. Cattaneo,”We Always Need Each Other” (2:19 min.) in which she speaks of Charles Sabine’s message to the world and of the need to fund HD research.

PLEASE DONATE

Kentucky House Bill 397, a clone of the 2008 Louisiana Science Education Act, is dead.

HB 397 (BR 1517) – T. Moore, J. Carney

AN ACT relating to science education and intellectual freedom.
Create a new section of KRS Chapter 158 to encourage local district teachers and administrators to foster an environment promoting objective discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of scientific theories; allow teachers to use, as permitted by the local board of education, materials in addition to state-approved texts and instructional materials for discussion of scientific theories including evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning; clarify that provisions do not promote religious doctrine or discrimination; provide that the section may be cited as the Kentucky Science Education and Intellectual Freedom Act.

Common sense has carried the day in the Bluegrass State!

The National Center for Science Education has posted an announcement of the demise of HB 397. (Download the entire bill here [Word doc]). The bill died in the Kentucky House Education Committee, to which it had been referred on February 10. The chair of that committee is Rep. Carl Rollins. We commend the Kentucky House Education Committee for letting this bill die rather than imitating the entire Louisiana legislature, Governor Bobby Jindal, and the Louisiana State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. They are living proof that politicians can follow principle rather than the dictates of the Religious Right — even in the Bible Belt, where Kentucky, along with Louisiana, is located.

The Discovery Institute, which is the headquarters of the intelligent design creationist movement, is heavily invested in the Louisiana legislation and the BESE policies. DI creationists helped write the LSEA and provided legal advice to the Louisiana Family Forum during the process of promoting the legislation and gutting BESE’s policies for administering it. DI staffer Casey Luskin showed up in Louisiana in May 2008 when the LA House Education Committee heard testimony on the Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA). In March of this year, he wrote a gloating entry with an amusingly ominous headline at Evolution News & Views, DI’s news “analysis” blog:

Proliferation of Academic Freedom Bills Is Darwin Lobby’s Worst Nightmare

In this piece, Luskin used KY HB 397 as an example of how the champions of “academic freedom” legislation were scaring the bejeezus out of “the intelligentsia” who were “very worried about the prospect of teachers gaining academic freedom, as a bill presently in the Kentucky legislature would allow.” According to Luskin,

The Kentucky bill contains an excellent example of language refuting assertions from critics that these bills allow the teaching of religion: ‘This section shall not be construed to promote any religious doctrine, promote discrimination for or against a particular set of religious beliefs, or promote discrimination for or against religion or nonreligion.’ The operative language of the academic freedom bills is entirely beneficial:

• The Kentucky bill encourages teachers to ‘promote critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of scientific theories being studied.’

Luskin then cites both the Ouachita Parish academic freedom policy and the LSEA as among the precedents for the proposed Kentucky legislation, asserting that “it isn’t just academic freedom legislation from the past three years that’s calling for critiques of evolution in the classroom”:

• Ouachita Parish, Louisiana: ‘[T]he teaching of some scientific subjects, such as biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning, can cause controversy … [T]eachers shall be permitted to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and weaknesses of existing scientific theories pertinent to the course being taught.’

(In November 2006, Louisiana Family Forum operative Darrell White persuaded the Ouachita Parish School Board to adopt its own “academic freedom” policy [pdf], which served as the template for SB 561 before it was revised as SB 733 and adopted as the LSEA. The Discovery Institute applauded the move.)

And finally — ta-da! — Luskin invokes the Louisiana Science Education Act:

And then of course there’s Louisiana 2008 Science Education Act, which requires that Louisiana schools shall ‘create and foster an environment…that promotes critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.’

And to think that the Louisiana legislature and Bobby Jindal literally handed the Discovery Institute this bragging point. At least the Kentucky House Education Committee had better sense.

If you have any friends in Kentucky, shoot them an e-mail and congratulate them. Their House Education Committee placed the interests of the children of Kentucky above the interests of the legislators who are shilling for creationists.

In Knox County, Tennessee, a parent named Kurt Zimmermann has complained to the school board about the use of the word “myth” in his son’s honors biology textbook, Asking About Life (Tobin and Dusheck, 2nd ed., 2001), which is being used at Farragut High School. Zimmermann’s complaint is nothing new. It sounds much like many other complaints made to school boards by creationist parents. But this one has a Louisiana connection.

Background

Mr. Zimmermann, a Sunday School teacher, objects that the book’s use of the word “myth” undermines his child’s belief in the truthfulness of the Bible and displays a bias against Christianity. In the complaint form that he filled out, he cites p. 319 of the book, on which there is a reference to “Creationism, the biblical myth that the universe was created by the Judeo-Christian God in 7 days.” At the April 7, 2010, Knox County School Board meeting, Mr. Zimmermann offered some remedies for the situation: “You could pitch the book, you could fix the book, you could come up with an alternative. There’s things you can do.” His friend Steve Cook, also a Sunday school teacher, agrees: “I am at my church teaching that there is a creator and I have students coming to me telling me there isn’t a creator.” (See this video clip of the school board meeting. See also “Ban a Science Book? School Board Delays Action,” at Metropulse, 4/8/2010.)

In order to evaluate the complaint that the word “myth” is offensive to Christians, the school’s review committee consulted Dictionary.com. Mr. Zimmermann used Webster’s Dictionary, where he found a section of the definition reflecting his contention that the word is insulting to Christians: “Describing Christian beliefs, such as Bible stories, as myth is therefore usually considered an attack on those beliefs.” But there is nothing inherently offensive or disrespectful to Christianity about the use of the word “myth.” The most respected dictionary in the English-speaking world, the Oxford English Dictionary, gives this as the first definition of the word:

1. a. A traditional story, typically involving supernatural beings or forces, which embodies and provides an explanation, aetiology, or justification for something such as the early history of a society, a religious belief or ritual, or a natural phenomenon.

The OED provides a representative statement in which the word is used with this meaning:

1978 J. D. CRICHTON in C. Jones et al. Study of Liturgy I. 7 The myth was a sacred narrative, whether true or fictional, which gave an account of, or ‘explained’, the origins of human life or of the community.

The word can indeed be used in a way that reflects Mr. Zimmerman’s objection, as in the second definition in the OED:

2. a. A widespread but untrue or erroneous story or belief; a widely held misconception; a misrepresentation of the truth. Also: something existing only in myth; a fictitious or imaginary person or thing.

However, the very next definition that follows this one points once again to a perfectly respectable — and respectful — way to use “myth”:

[2.] b. A person or thing held in awe or generally referred to with near reverential admiration on the basis of popularly repeated stories (whether real or fictitious). [emphasis added]

In the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the most venerable of all school reference works, the article on “Christian Myth and Legend” opens with a wonderfully sensitive recognition of the importance of the concept of myth to Christianity:

Myths and legends number among the most creative and abundant contributions of Christianity to the history of human culture. They have inspired artists, dramatists, clerics, and others to contemplate the wondrous effects of Christian salvation on the cosmos and its inhabitants. They conjoin diverse cultural horizons and fuse them creatively with the religious histories that exist prior to and alongside the orthodox Christian world. . . .

But Mr. Zimmermann and his son find the word objectionable, so he and three like-minded supporters registered their complaints against Asking About Life (AAL) at the April 7 school board meeting. (Given the volatile nature of the issue, all parties — both complainants and board members — conducted themselves with admirable Southern courtesy, as shown in the school board’s 4/7/10 video of the meeting.)

The school board has a review process for citizen complaints, which Mr. Zimmermann apparently followed correctly. The book unanimously passed inspection by the six-member review committee appointed by the principal of Farragut High School. The committee members’ individual review forms, along with Zimmermann’s complaint, are included in the board’s April 7 agenda [pdf]. Below is the clip of the complaint, which reveals the Louisiana connection. Anyone who has followed the posts at the LA Coalition for Science website for the last two years will see a familiar name (click on image below):

Kurt Zimmermann's Complaint

For readers who are not familiar with what has been going on in Louisiana, here is the connection:

Where the form asks, “What reviews of this material have you read?,” Zimmermann wrote, “19 page Review by Charles H. Voss, Jr. Ph.D. dated August, 2006.” This indicates that Zimmermann is taking as his authority for evaluating Asking About Life none other than Louisiana’s own Charles H. Voss, Jr., a longtime creationist who is well known among creationist-watchers for his mischief-making in our state. In September 2009, working with the Louisiana Family Forum (LFF), an affiliate of Focus on the Family, Voss was instrumental in persuading the Louisiana State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) to adopt a creationist-friendly procedure for reviewing complaints about the use of creationist supplementary materials in public schools. (See “Procedure Crafted for Handling Evolution-materials Complaints,” Baton Rouge Advocate 9/17/09.) One year earlier, the LFF had engineered the passage of the Louisiana Science Education Act under which the use of such materials is permitted.

Background on Voss

Voss has promoted creationism in Louisiana for years. In 1993, he wrote a pamphlet entitled “Did God Direct Evolution?” [pdf], in which he rejected the mainstream belief in theistic evolution (the religious belief that God used evolution to shape life on Earth), opting instead for full-blown, biblical, young-earth creationism: “Ninety percent of the known indicators of the earth’s age say the earth is young while only ten percent give old ages to the earth.” He contends that scientific evidence and the Bible make it “impossible to merge biblical creation and evolution into a single theory such as theistic evolution.” According to Voss, “God-directed evolution seems plausible on the surface, but it is in conflict with the biblical record. . . . God did not direct evolution!” Among his items of evidence is this: “Human-appearing sandal prints have been found in supposedly 600-million-year old rock — a 600-million year discrepancy.” (This little factoid is documented on websites such as “The Bible UFO Connection.”) In his biosketch in the pamphlet, he informs readers that he “considers creation research and Bible study as avocations and believes that he can show logically that God does exist.”

In 1994, he and his colleagues in the creationist Origins Resource Association attempted (unsuccessfully) to convince the Livingston Parish, LA, School Board to adopt a creationist curriculum guide that was riddled with errors. (See Barbara Forrest, “Combating Creationism in a Louisiana School District,” The Textbook Letter, July-August 1997.) He now partners with the Louisiana Family Forum to promote his “Biology Text Addenda” at TextAddOns.com, among which is the “19 page review” of Asking About Life that Mr. Zimmermann is using in Knox County. (The AAL addendum is included in the Knox Co. School Board agenda packet [pdf].) Voss has written creationist addenda for eleven well-known biology textbooks; he has posted them  in pdf for downloading by teachers, students, and parents. However, he does not have the expertise in biology that would qualify him to critique biology textbooks. His degrees are in electrical engineering, and he is a retired professor of electrical and computer engineering. His credentials are listed along with the names of the creationist reviewers of his addenda on his TextAddOns website [pdf].

By way of contrast, the co-author of Asking About Life, Albert J. Tobin, Ph.D., has distinguished credentials in the biological sciences.

Allan J. Tobin, Ph.D., is Managing Director of MRSSI and Senior Scientific Advisor to the High Q Foundation and to CHDI Inc., organizations dedicated to the development of therapies for Huntington’s disease. He is also Professor Emeritus at UCLA. Tobin received his S.B. (1963) from MIT, in Humanities and Science, and his Ph.D. (1969) from Harvard, in Biophysics. After postdoctoral training at the Weizmann Institute and at MIT, he became Assistant Professor of Biology at Harvard from 1971 to 1975. In 1975, he moved to UCLA, where he later became Professor of Physiological Science and Professor of Neurology. He was a visiting scientist at the Institut Pasteur in 1982 and at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in 2002-2003. At UCLA, he was Chair of the Interdepartmental Neuroscience Progam from 1989-1995, Director of the Brain Research Institute from 1995-2002, cofounder of the NeuroEngineering Training Program, and, from 1996, the Eleanor Leslie Chair in Neuroscience. Tobin’s research laboratory at UCLA used molecular and cellular techniques to study the function, regulation, and degeneration of GABA-producing neurons in the brain and spinal cord, in order to address basic mechanistic questions important for Huntington’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, and spinal cord injury. He was Scientific Director of the Hereditary Disease Foundation from 1979 to 2002 and is the coauthor of Tobin and Dusheck, Asking About Life, a prize-winning textbook.

Dr. Tobin’s co-author Jennie Dusheck is a professional science writer, currently an author at Cengage Learning, with a B.A. in English and zoology (terrestrial evolutionary biology, animal behavior and ecology) from the University of California-Berkeley. [UPDATE 4/12/10 — Ms. Dusheck has informed me that she is a freelance writer, not a Cengage employee. She wrote and is responsible for the chapters on evolution in AAL. Readers can see the full extent of her credentials here.] She also has an M.A. in zoology from the University of California-Davis (ecology, evolutionary biology, developmental biology, plant-animal interactions, and statistics and experimental design). She earned a Certificate in Science Writing from the University of California-Santa Cruz. Ms. Dusheck is also a member of the National Association of Science Writers, the Northern California Science Writers Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Authors Guild.

Back to Knox County

The school board did not vote on Zimmermann’s complaint at its April 7 meeting but decided to table it until a later meeting. Board chair Indya Kincannon noted that the textbook review committee members were not there to speak for themselves, so she moved to defer action for one month in order to allow the committee to be present at the next meeting. Although this move was very considerate on Ms. Kincannon’s part, if past experience in Louisiana is any indication of what is going on in Tennessee, when school boards defer such clear-cut creationist initiatives until a future meeting, the creationists then have extra time to marshal their forces even further, making them more difficult to deal with. Backed up by the review committee’s unanimous recommendation to retain the book, the board should have made an unequivocal decision to deny Mr. Zimmermann’s request. To their credit, the majority of board members, in a 6-3 vote, did reject an effort by board member Karen Carson to work out a compromise that would have permitted the use of Voss’s addendum:

Karen Carson, of the West Knox County 5th District, tried to find middle ground with an amendment that would have upheld the school committee’s recommendation but also offered to biology teachers a critical analysis of the textbook submitted by Zimmermann and written by Charles Voss. (Voss, a professor emeritus of electrical engineering at Louisiana State University, is a longtime activist for the cause of creationism and vice president of an outfit called the Origins Resource Association.) But Carson’s amendment satisfied no one, especially after she revised it to make it subject to review by school system science staff, and it failed on a 3-6 vote. [Metropulse, 4/8/2010; emphasis added] [See the Origins Resource Association here. See also the ORA's Facebook page.]

Note carefully that the addendum is referred to as a “critical analysis.” The LA Science Education Act is designed to promote “critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning” (emphasis added). Voss includes “critical thinking” exercises in his addenda, and the LA Family Forum promotes them on a “Critical Thinking in the Classroom” page on its website.

The August 2006 addendum that Zimmermann used and that Ms. Carson wanted to offer to Knox Co. biology teachers is interesting in another respect: this addendum is a sanitized version of an earlier one that was dated “October 2003.” The 2003 version is saturated with creationist language and young-earth creationist source citations. In 2006 — after the verdict in Kitzmiller v. Dover — Voss tried to cleanse the creationist language from his 2003 addendum; in fact, he “updated” all eleven of the addenda on the Textaddons.com website. (Each addendum is simply a variation on the same basic document, adjusted for a specific biology textbook.) In the October 2003 version of the AAL addendum, Voss’s first three table of contents entries are direct references to items on the page that Zimmermann cites in his complaint:

1. Creation is a Myth – p. 319
2. Creation is Not Science – p. 319
3. Each Species is Created – p. 319

Voss responded this way in the 2003 addendum to the use of the word “myth” that Zimmermann finds objectionable:

The statement ‘… and creationism, the biblical myth that the universe was created by the “Judeo-Christian God in 7 days”‘ has not been proven. Such a statement is not science but an opinion of the textbook authors and reveals a decided bias. Such statements do not belong in a science textbook. [p. 1]

(To the complaint form question, “What do you believe is the main idea of this material?,” Zimmermann wrote, “A clear bias by the authors towards Christianity.” To the question, “What would you like your school to do about this material?,” he wrote, “Immediately remove the book.”)

To the statement in AAL that “creation ‘science’ is not science” (p. 319), Voss responded in unequivocal creationist language in the 2003 addendum:

The statement ‘But creation “science” is not science’ is very misleading in that by context it implies that evolution is science. . . . Any definition of science that can label the term ‘evolution’ as commonly used as science will also include creationism as science. [p. 1; emphasis added]

To the AAL statement, “In that book [The Origin of Species] Darwin rejected the idea that each species had been specially created,” Voss responded:

The statement ‘In that book, Darwin rejected the idea that each species had been specially created’ may have been accepted in Darwin’s time but it is not accepted today by creationists. Today’s thinking is that, in general, the ‘Biblical kind’ is equivalent to the family level and in a few instances a genus. [p.1; emphasis added] ["Biblical kind" is a traditional creationist term that refers to the "kinds" of living things as God created them in the Book of Genesis.]

Voss’s sources in the 2003 version of the addendum include Creation Research Quarterly and Creation Ex Nihilo (now Creation Magazine), both young-earth creationist journals. He included numerous citations of articles by “John Woodmorappe,” which is the false name under which creationist Jan Peczkis writes. He even cited the intelligent design (ID) creationist supplementary textbook, Of Pandas and People, as a source. (Pandas was thoroughly exposed in my testimony and expert witness report [pdf] in Kitzmiller v. Dover in 2005.) Voss cited the seminal ID creationist book, The Mystery of Life’s Origin (1984), co-authored by Discovery Institute fellows Charles Thaxton and Walter Bradley (with Roger Olsen). He also cited Michael Denton’s Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1986), which helped bring about ID proponent Phillip Johnson’s creationist epiphany in 1987.

By August 2006, after the decisive verdict in the Kitzmiller case that teaching ID is unconstitutional, Voss had sanitized his addenda, just as Pandas had to be sanitized after the 1987 Edwards v. Aguillard ruling that teaching “creation science” is unconstitutional. (The “creation science” language in Pandas was replaced with “intelligent design” language.) Most noticeably, he completely sidestepped AAL‘s statement about creationism and myth that Zimmermann finds objectionable, substituting instead an objection to the definition of evolution on p. 320. Here are his new TOC entries in the August 2006 addendum that Mr. Zimmermann is using:

1. What is Evolution? – p. 320
2. The Fossil Record Tells a Story of evolution – p. 327
3. Extinct Living Fossils – p. 328

Responding to AAL’s statements on p. 320 that Darwin’s theory of evolution includes the ideas of the common descent and natural selection, Voss voices his disagreement in terms of the traditional creationist objection to “macroevolution” but conspicuously avoids the word “creationism”:

Darwin observed the ability of organisms to adapt (micro-evolution) and assumed that on this basis macro-evolution was true. Macro-evolution could be said to occur if a dog became a cat or a dinosaur became a bird. It occurs at the genus or higher level and implies that all life on Earth descended from a few types of cells that somehow came into being in the past. Many scientists do not agree with this hypothesis. [p. 1]

The rest of the addendum is similarly sanitized — but only of the overtly creationist terminology, not the substantive creationist content. Nor did Voss cleanse out all the creationist citations. He retained Evolution: A Theory in Crisis and The Mystery of Life’s Origin. He also retained a citation of an article about Haeckel’s embryos that ID creationist and Discovery Institute fellow Jonathan Wells slipped past the gatekeepers at American Biology Teacher in 1999. In this article, Wells recites his now-signature complaints against using Ernst Haeckel’s 19th-century drawings of embryos as evidence for evolution. This horse has been dead for years, and Wells’s complaints have been addressed many times, including in a later issue of American Biology Teacher. Yet the citation remains in both the 2003 and 2006 versions of Voss’s AAL addendum. [Update 4/12/10: Ms. Dusheck also pointed out that no edition of AAL contains the Haeckel mistake about which Wells complains in his article. I would add that Voss's one-size-fits-all addendum is not an accurate critique of any of the books that he has targeted.]

Voss has simply followed a page out of the Discovery Institute code language playbook by revising his addenda to make them appear superficially to be about evolution rather than creationism, just as the Discovery Institute did with its newest ID textbook, the deceptively titled Explore Evolution.

So what does all this analysis boil down to with respect to the Zimmerman complaint?

Here’s the central point: Mr. Zimmermann cited Voss’s creationist textbook addendum as his sole review material for a textbook in which he ostensibly objects to the use of one word, “myth,” which he says offends Christians. Zimmermann’s complaint about AAL zeroes in on exactly the item in the book that is the first item in Voss’s 2003 addendum, making exactly the same point: that calling creationism a myth betrays the bias of the authors and does not belong in a textbook.

There is nothing new in this type of complaint, just as there is nothing inherently offensive about the book’s use of the word “myth.” But there seems to be more to the story, which Zimmermann voiced through the national megaphone of Fox News. (Despite commenting at the April 7 school board meeting on the unwelcome attention “that I have received, and my family — socially, at work, in the media — nationally, incidentally,” he has appeared on Fox News at least twice, on April 7 and again on April 8. In fact, his April 7 appearance was on the morning of April 7, before the evening school board meeting.) Zimmermann has said that he lodged the complaint about the book after his son and some other students complained about the word. But in the April 7 Fox News interview, he elaborated on this basic account:

Since I brought that issue up, there’s been a host of other parents that have come forward, and there are other things in that book that are pretty, uh, technically inaccurate and things of that nature. So it’s more than just the statement that I was concerned about. So it’s kind of grown a little bit.

So now there are other things in AAL that he is complaining about. (Mark Littleton, a supporter of Zimmermann’s who spoke at the April 7 board meeting, read a list of “historical and scientific inaccuracies” in the book — which he compiled after having looked at it for the first time only a couple of days before the meeting.) There is more “technically inaccurate” material in the book, says Zimmermann, who professed during the April 7 Fox News interview that “It was really the kids who identified it ['myth']. I’m not smart enough to pick that stuff up. They are.”

This comment raises the question of who identified the other, “technically inaccurate” aspects of the book. Who is advising Zimmermann? The kids? That is very unlikely if the Knox County case, like so many other past creationism episodes around the U.S., runs true to form. Even if Mr. Zimmermann has not been working in tandem with a creationist organization so far, some group will now likely beat a path to his door. And if the Louisiana Family Forum runs true to form, they may very well contact Zimmermann since he is using one of their preferred “supplementary materials” as advertised on the LFF website. Indeed, Voss himself may already be directly involved. In response to a statement about the addendum that board member Karen Carson made during the meeting, Zimmermann said, “You’re talking about the addendum that was provided by Dr. Voss?” (emphasis added) Zimmermann’s statement sounds as though Voss actually gave him the addendum. (There is a precedent among LFF creationists for their involving themselves in such issues. LFF operative Darrell White inserted himself [pdf] into the Texas textbook selection controversy on behalf of the Discovery Institute in 2003.)

Here is the Fox News interview, followed by a closing message from the Louisiana Coalition for Science to the Knox County School Board:

To the ladies and gentlemen of the Knox County School Board: Please don’t give in to these creationist demands. When you compromise good science education with creationism, you don’t solve your problem — you exacerbate and prolong it. Sometimes you just have to say no. Stand your ground, as the Louisiana legislature and the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education refused to do when we were faced here with an effort to inject creationism into science education — an effort in which Dr. Voss was integrally involved. Set a different precedent — one that says to your local constituents and to the rest of America that the integrity of authentic science education will be protected at every level in the state of Tennessee. The rest of the country will admire you for it. The scientific community will appreciate your courage. And the supporters of good science education who in 2008-2009 tried and failed to stop Voss and his creationist colleagues in Louisiana will cheer you on.

Serving as a member of the Board of Directors of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) has been an honor that I have enjoyed since 2004. NCSE is the national clearinghouse for information about and assistance with protecting the teaching of science in public schools, especially the teaching of evolution.

The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) is a not-for-profit, membership organization providing information and resources for schools, parents and concerned citizens working to keep evolution in public school science education. We educate the press and public about the scientific, educational, and legal aspects of the creation and evolution controversy, and supply needed information and advice to defend good science education at local, state, and national levels. Our 4000 members are scientists, teachers, clergy, and citizens with diverse religious affiliations.  (See NCSE’s FAQ here.)

The executive director, Dr. Eugenie Scott, recently gave a talk entitled “Creationism: Still Crazy After All These Years.” Her talk (56:03 minutes) is posted below for the information of LCFS readers. She is speaking about the history of intelligent design creationism as it has developed from the earlier “creation science” movement. At 29:54, she begins talking about Louisiana’s creationist law, the Louisiana  Science Education Act of 2008.

Dr. Scott’s talk is a very good primer on the development of creationism in the United States — all the way to our own state of Louisiana. Readers who want to support the important work that NCSE does can join online.

These interviews are posted so that Louisiana citizens will know that what has happened here has captured the attention of our fellow citizens around the country. They support us, but they are dumbfounded that Louisiana has once again passed creationist legislation after having precipitated the U. S. Supreme Court decision, Edwards v. Aguillard (1987) with the passage of the “Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-Science Act” in 1981.

REMINDER: Readers with information that creationist materials are being used in Louisiana public school science classes should contact the Louisiana Coalition for Science.

In June 2009, the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) received dozens of letters from concerned teachers, scientists, and citizens all over Louisiana asking them to reject a creationist-influenced policy governing the implementation of the creationist Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA) of 2008. This law, written by the Louisiana Family Forum with assistance and legal advice from the Discovery Institute, permits the use of creationist supplementary materials in public school science classes. Several months later, in January 2009, BESE adopted the policy by which local school districts must implement the LSEA, gutting the prohibitions against teaching creationism that had wisely been written into the policy by the Dept. of Education on the advice of expert science teachers and scientists on the specially constituted Louisiana Science Education Act Advisory Committee. The policy was inserted as §2304, “Science Education,” into Bulletin 741 [doc], the Louisiana Handbook for School Administrators, to instruct parish and local school officials concerning the implementation of the LSEA. First, however, the policy had to be posted in the Louisiana Register for public comment (April 2009 [pdf], pp. 740-741). BESE received public comments in the form of letters from citizens, teachers, and scientists who support teaching science honestly and accurately. BESE ignored their letters, and the policy is now in effect. In January 2010, Louisiana begins the new year burdened with not only a creationist law implemented by a creationist policy, but now also a creationist complaint procedure that will turn every complaint about supplementary materials into a dog and pony show rather than a serious consideration of materials being used in a science class.

In September 2009, BESE adopted a complaint procedure which, like the implementation policy written by the Louisiana Dept. of Education, was also revised to suit the Louisiana Family Forum. Like the policy, the complaint procedure has been posted for public comment in the Louisiana Register (November 2009 [pdf], pp. 2590-91). In response to this posting, letters were sent to BESE by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the National Center for Science Education, and Barbara Forrest. The letter from Dena Sher, AU State Legislative Counsel, is here [pdf]. The letter from NCSE Executive Director Eugenie Scott is here [pdf]. (See NCSE’s article, “NCSE Advises Louisiana,” here.) The letter from Barbara Forrest is here [pdf].

BESE has consistently — and unanimously — supported the Louisiana Family Forum’s creationist revisions to the areas of the LSEA that are under its purview. The board has been fully informed by concerned citizens and organizations that it is doing the bidding of documented creationists. Louisiana citizens should download copies of the above letters, distribute them to their parish school board members, and let the board members know that they do not want creationist supplemental materials adopted for use in their public schools. When some school board or individual science teacher walks through the giant creationist loopholes in the policy and complaint procedure, it will be with the explicit consent of the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, who refused to listen to their own staff at the Dept. of Education and to the teachers and scientists who actually do the work of educating students. BESE members cannot say that they did not know what they were doing. We have told them — twice.

As the new decade begins in 2010, “Top Ten” lists  are a popular way to commemorate the events of 2009, and science is well-represented in the list-making. Wired Science lists the “Top Scientific Breakthroughs of 2009.” The Examiner lists the “Top 10 Science Stories of 2009.” Scientific American has posted a slideshow of “The Top 10 Science Stories of 2009.” ScienceNOW, a website by the American Association for the Advancement of Science for publishing breaking science news , has listed “The Top 10 ScienceNOWs of 2009.” National Geographic News lists the “Top Ten Videos of 2009: Nat Geo News’s Most Watched.” And Religion Dispatches lists its “Top Ten Religion & Science Stories.” Louisiana closes out 2009 by being on two “Top Ten” lists, but these are lists on which the citizens of Louisiana should be embarrassed to be included. Virtually all of the above lists include stories that highlight important discoveries related to evolution. Louisiana, however, made it onto these two lists for its attack on the teaching of evolution.

• The National Center for Science Education has posted its “Top Ten Evolution/Creationism Stories of the Year.” Louisiana is NCSE’s story #5, which highlights (using hyperlinks) the Louisiana Family Forum‘s commandeering of both the policy and the complaint process related to implementation of the 2008 Louisiana Science Education Act:

5. Louisiana faces “academic freedom” In 2008, the Louisiana Science Education Act was signed into law, which opened the door to teaching creationism in public school science classes. Since then, the state board of education has ignored the recommendations of its own science education professionals, turning instead to the Louisiana Family Forum for guidance. Under the board’s guidelines, supplementary classroom materials can’t be rejected just because they include creationism. And challenging the materials triggers a convoluted hearing process that the Louisiana Coalition for Science calls “seriously flawed.”

“A mixed result in Louisiana”

“More bad news from Louisiana”

Louisiana coverage

(See LCFS articles about this here and here.) (NOTE: Readers who value good science education can begin 2010 by joining NCSE, which is the only organization devoted solely to protecting the teaching of evolution from creationist attacks. Disclosure: I serve on the NCSE Board of Directors.)

• Lauri Lebo, a journalist who provided excellent coverage of the trial in the case of Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District (2005) and who published a book about the trial, has included Louisiana as #3 in the list she compiled for Religion Dispatches.

3. Just Say No . . . To Louisiana The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB), one of the nation’s leading scientific societies, took the unusual step in February to boycott Louisiana due to the state’s new anti-science law. In 2008, lawmakers voted to pass the Science Education Act, which was signed into law by Gov. Bobby Jindal. The law, based largely on wording from the pro-intelligent design Discovery Institute’s sample academic freedom bill, explicitly says that teachers are permitted to use supplemental materials to teach critiques of evolution and opens the door to teaching creationism and intelligent design. In response, SICB chose to hold its annual conference in Utah, whose state Board of Education recently passed a resolution recognizing that “the Theory of Evolution is a major unifying concept in science.”

Looking at the bright side, Louisiana is blessed with dedicated public school science teachers and accomplished scientists. Readers around the state should (1) let your science teachers know that you support teaching evolution and thank them for their efforts to teach good science, and (2) inform your school board members that you will be watching them to make sure that they do not allow creationist materials into our public school science classes. As always, if you learn that such materials are being used, please contact the Louisiana Coalition for Science.