Palin Mocks Autism Research

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 17:30:00 GMT

No one should be too surprised at this point to hear that one of McCain’s top advisers referred to Sarah Palin as a “whackjob.” Or that Alaska’s largest newspaper enthusiastically endorsed Barack Obama for president. But it remains fun (in that stomach-churning way) to take a peak at some of the myriad reasons why Palin is widely disliked and distrusted even among her own people.

Take fruit flies, for instance. In Palin’s recent speech on special needs children, one of her more awkward blunders pertained to earmarks:

"Where does a lot of that earmark money end up, anyway? [...] You've heard about, um, these -- some of these pet projects they really don't make a whole lot of sense, and sometimes these dollars they go to projects having little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not!"

As the Huffington Post points out, fruit flies have been essential to autism research, showing that a protein called neurexin plays a huge role in proper brain functioning. Considering that this speech was supposed to be about helping special needs families, it’s truly baffling why Palin would have chosen to bash research that is widely known to be integral to understanding and treating autism.

Furthermore, fruit flies are the basic research tool of modern genetics, as anyone who has taken a biology class knows. To sneer at such research displays either extreme stupidity or a dangerous lack of concern for the opinions of the vast majority of her would-be constituents.

Photo: wizbangblog.com

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Palin Mocks Autism Research