Crossfire: who needs science anyway?

I've watched Crossfire maybe twice in the past year. Today's show, supposedly about religious politics and the Schiavo case, was quite a gem. In the midst of their typical gibberish arguments, the Left and the Right were thoroughly divided on every "issue" but one. Both sides agreed that funding for scientific research is little more than frivolous pork. As evidence, one pundit noted that she wasn't even familiar with the subject of the research in question. It must, therefore, be pointless.

Here is an excerpt from today's transcript:

WATKINS: Interested in some light reading?

"The Pig Book" is sizzling on stores right now. It -- it -- it chronicles some of Congress' more spectacular pork barrel projects from 1991 to 2004, more than 52,000 of them, running a tab of $185 billion. Waste? You tell me. Check this out, $15 million for an indoor rain forest in Iowa, $2.2 million to renovate the North Pole, $273,000 to combat Goth culture -- Goth culture -- in Missouri.

I suspect Senator Rick Santorum, for one, is especially dismayed by such frivolous use of taxpayer money. A couple of weeks ago, he and other senators rolled out the Senate Republican poverty alleviation agenda. The 12-point plan includes boosted charitable giving, enhanced welfare reform, hunger relief and work programs. Senator Santorum's plan to fight inner-city poverty could use an infusion a whole lot more than, let's say, a study of screw worms, which, by the way, got $102 million.

You know, the Republicans are beaten up so often, Donna, for not caring about the poor and the oppressed, but Senator Santorum and a number of his colleagues have come out with a 12-point plan that really is going to do something to help people who are down on their luck.

BRAZILE: Well, look, look, Democrats welcome Republicans' interest in helping and serving the poor. But I got to agree with you that I think there's a lot of pork in this budget. And, by the way, what's a screwworm?

(LAUGHTER)

For those who are curious, "screwworms" are the larvae of an insignificant fly known as "the fly that eats men's flesh", which is all but eradicated in the US. Although the fly occasionally reappears in the southern US, certainly there is no compelling public interest in studying some stupid man-eating parasite...

According to the USDA:

The Primary or New World Screwworm, Cochliomyia hominivorax (Coquerel), is an obligate parasite (meaning it must pass part of its life cycle in a living host) of warm blooded animals, including humans. The species name, hominivorax, in fact means "man-eater" and was given by the French physician, Dr. Charles Coquerel, in 1858 describing the species that he identified as responsible for the deaths of hundreds of prisoners of the Devil's Island penal colony in French Guiana. Once an animal becomes infested with screwworm, death almost inevitably results unless the wound is cured.  

The female fly typically lays an egg mass containing 200-300 eggs on or near an open wound on a living animal. The eggs hatch in 10-12 hours and the first stage larvae (also known as maggots or worms, each approximately 0.04" or 1 mm in length) crawl into the wound and begin tearing at the host's tissue with a pair of sharp mouth hooks. The larvae feed on the resulting liquid that oozes into the wound. Once a wound has become infested with larvae, it also becomes more attractive to female screwworm flies ready to lay eggs. As a result, a wound may become infested with hundreds to thousands of larvae. The larvae feed in the wound for about 5 days and pass through two additional stages before they crawl out of the wound and drop to the ground. Once on the ground, the larvae (now approximately 0.2-0.7" or 6-17 mm in length) burrow into the soil to a depth of about 1-2 inches and form the pupal stage. After about 7 days, the adults (flies) exit the pupae and make their way to the surface of the soil. Both sexes range in color from dark metallic blue to metallic bluish green to metallic green and have three dark longitudinal stripes (the middle stripe slightly shorter than the outer stripes) on their backs between their wings. Both sexes are larger than house flies with males being about 0.4-0.5" (10-12 mm) and females about 0.3-0.4" (8-10 mm) in length. They then expand and dry their wings and fly away. After about 3 days the males and females mate and females begin the cycle of laying eggs on the living hosts. Females may be capable of laying a mass of eggs once every three days for up to 10 or 11 times during their approximately month long adult life span.