Explore Candidates → President → Ralph Nader on Science
Ralph Nader
on
Science
- Abortion and Birth Control
- Civil Liberties and Domestic Security
- Crime and Punishment
- Education
- Environment and Energy
- Gay Rights
- Government and Elections
- Gun Control
- Health Care
- Immigration
- Internet and Media
- Iraq and Foreign Policy
- Medical Marijuana and Drug Policy
- Religion and Public Life
- Science
- Social Security
- Taxes and Budget
- Trade and Economics
“The list of neglected human needs and injustices by the paucity of free-minded scientists is legion. In areas such as tobacco, product safety, environmental pollution, workplace toxics, and the efficacy and side effects of drugs on adults and children, I have observed the difficulties of securing the participation of academic scientists for over four decades. In a climate that sanctions corporatism over individuals, the university campus has thinned the ranks of these people…. The consequences of their decreased numbers are the reduced capacities to foresee and forestall dangerous products and technologies.”
Emailed response from the Nader campaign's communications director on Oct. 18, 2008: "Ralph Nader supports increased funding for scientific research."
“The aggressiveness of corporate science has placed academic science in an increasingly zero-sum relationship. The former comes with money to the university and prospects of personal profit to the professors.... Academic science, with its custom of open exchange, its gift relationships, its willingness to provide expert testimony that speaks truth to power, its serendipitous curiosity and its nonproprietary legacy to the next generation of student-scientists, differs significantly from corporate science, which is ridden with trade secrets, profit-determined selection of research, and awesome political power to get its way, whether by domination or servility to its payers.”
Ralph Nader supports stem cell research. Through two organizations Nader created, the Center for the Study of Responsive Law in 1968 and the Consumer Project on Technology in 1995, he has contributed to efforts to insure stem cell research advances developed with public money are made available to the public and not held back by corporate or university patent holders.
Green Party 2008 Presidential Candidate Questionnaire Feb 3, 2008
"We don't like manned exploration. It costs far too much and is used for PR purposes."
Emailed response from the Nader campaign's communications director on Oct. 18, 2008: "Ralph Nader is supports increased emphasis on science education in public school curriculum."
"Inhumane indifference also characterizes the attitude of the heavily tax and research-subsidized pharmaceutical industry, which is so focused on profits that it barely spends research dollars on infectious diseases like malaria or tuberculosis. Drug company executives know that vaccines rarely produce big profits. Just big life savings. Drug companies prefer to sell drugs that are taken daily, or the lifestyle drugs that purport to reduce obesity or enhance potency."
"With 13 percent of the U.S. population, black Americans constitute over 50 percent of all new cases of HIV. This infection rate is eight times the rate of whites. It gets worse. Almost 70 percent of new female cases of HIV-positive women are black women who are a stunning 13 times more likely to be diagnosed with AIDS than white women. Black women get AIDS overwhelmingly through heterosexual contact, the documentary reported.... The social services, such as health coverage, that have restrained the AIDS epidemic among whites are not proportionately there among black communities.... The lead burden will be on black community leaders and an aroused public health profession to turn around our country's priorities in Congress, the White House, state and local governments, and prod more media attention. On the local and national television news, there is certainly enough trivia to replace."