Hillary Clinton Quotes
There is a movement to make Washington an evidence-free zone …. There are major forces working to undermine science in our country.
The country was going through a period in which partisan ideology drove politics and public policy for many people. Scientific findings would be used if they supported ideological positions and they would be ignored if they did not. In some cases scientists were attacked and discredited if their findings contradicted established political positions.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, First Lady (William Clinton), U. S. Secretary of State, U. S. Senator (Democrat, NY), Speech, July 10, 2005
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Explaining the difficulty of lobbying for controls on science and technology:
This quotation from 1888 is apropos many of the major scientific advances which are counter-intuitive. Relativity was one; another was Quantum Mechanics where we have to learn to accept the fact that something can be in two (or more) places at once or that the exact same forces acting on an object can produce more than one result. Most non-scientists would see these as absurd, but they are basic characteristics of modern physics.
At the time, American medicine was not much of a science, but mostly controlled by ideological opinion of prestigious physicians espousing theories in the speculative non-scientific sense. Beaumont, who had made discoveries that contradicted the established ideology of most physicians, laid down a scientific principle. However, it would take American medicine another century to accept scientific method as the driver of medical practice. Even into the 21st century, there were some physicians who did not accept scientific research as determinative. In 2009, it became a major area of political controversy as to whether scientific research should control what the Government would or would not pay for when public funds were involved. There was still a part of the society that saw scientists as elitist and not to be trusted in public policy making.
When a scientist is persuaded to change his position, he is acting in the great tradition of the best of scientists. When a politician does the same, he is a flip flopper, without any real principles and clearly not to be trusted. A scientist would not be trusted by his peers if he did not readily change is views.
This was his last House debate and whereas almost all scientists had agreed that climate change was a serious challenge to the nation, an ideologically driven majority of his Republican Party denied that that there was any climate change that was different from the usual vicissitudes of nature, he tried to persuade his anti-scientific, conservative colleagues to face reality.
His major facilities are located in Rockville, Maryland in the “Biotechnology Corridor” which is 10 minutes from the National Institutes of Health, the Surgeon General’s Office, the Food & Drug Administration and 40 minutes to the White House or Capital Hill.
Despite strong efforts by the health authorities, many Americans went into an irrational panic mode regarding Ebola and States and local government were passing draconian quarantine measures that were actually counter-productive and increased the risk by pandering to public fears often instigated or whipped up by some media pundits.
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton is an American politician, diplomat, lawyer, writer, and public speaker who served as the 67th United States secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, as a United States senator from New York from 2001 to 2009, and as First Lady of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Clinton became the first woman to be nominated for president of the United States by a major political party when she won the Democratic Party nomination in 2016. She was the first woman to win the popular vote in an American presidential election; however, she failed to win the Electoral College.
