Wednesday,
February 25, 2004
Scientists
close to breaking the genetic code for “values”
- Blix Panda
As the current crop of presidential candidates argue over the
importance of “values,” Americans can find comfort
in knowing that recent breakthroughs in the field of genetics
may someday allow them to actually understand what exactly the
candidates are talking about.
“We’re getting closer every day to some real solid
evidence of what a value actually is,” said Dan Filbert,
lead researcher at HERSC Genetic Labs in Burbank, California.
He and his team have been hard at work putting together what they
call a “roadmap to values.”
“It is similar to an organization flow chart more or less,”
said Filbert. “You start with the basic form of values at
the top and from there, if it works as we envision it to, the
chart will break down the rudimentary basic value form into sub
categories such as ‘family values’, the ‘value
of unborn life’, ‘traditional values’ and possibly
even virtue.”
Not everyone shares Filbert’s enthusiasm about the potential
benefits of a more informed electorate. Some view unlocking the
true meaning of values to be the “Holy Grail” of politics,
and potentially damaging to a well entrenched American political
establishment.
Indeed, firms like HERSC have for the past few years struggled
to find public funding for their studies, especially with a Republican
stronghold on both congressional houses as well as Pennsylvania
Avenue.
“Oh, yeah,” said Filbert. “ We’re working
on nickels and dimes down here. It’s our private donors
that really keep us going.”
In Bush’s most recent budget submitted to Congress, "value"
research was near the bottom for scientific funding, coming in
well below traditionally Republican-loathed programs such as stem
cell research, AIDS and SETI.
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