Research vs. charity

"Why is it more important to put a man on the moon than to fight poverty?"

So asks JW Victor '05 in his utterly medieval-minded "We Want Food," an article in the Spring 2002 edition of CommonSense. Mr. Victor's ideas represent the kind of backward thinking that threatens to stifle the dynamism and creativity which have made America great.

In a nutshell, it is more important to put a man on the moon than to fight poverty because only a society with the ability to put a man on the moon is in a position to do anything significant about poverty. Our ability to help the poor is enhanced through technological advances and economic growth, without which the poor would be even worse off than they are today.

With regard to current biological research, Mr. Victor writes, "there will soon come a day when we are ready to pursue these promising and exciting sciences," but that day will come "only after we have first taken care of those in need right now." Mr. Victor would have us suspend all scientific research, and presumably all other non-charitable endeavors, until the time comes when poverty has been eliminated.

Yet there is no absolute poverty line upon which everyone will agree and thus no way to decide when poverty is "eliminated." Since he quotes the Bible in his article, Mr. Victor is certainly familiar with Jesus' statement "the poor you will always have with you." (Matthew 26:11) No matter how much we spend on food, health care and housing for the poor, poverty will always be a problem. We should help the poor as best we can, but we cannot suspend scientific research and innovation in the misguided hope that poverty will eventually disappear if we only try hard enough.

Furthermore, in his reckless dismissal of debate on stem cell research as a "waste of time," Mr. Victor neglects to consider the lives that could potentially be saved through in vitro growth of organs for transplant and other possibly unknown applications. Admittedly, implementation of such research will take time, but so has implementation of Louis Pasteur's germ theory of disease, without which many vaccines used today would not even exist. Mr. Victor morbidly calls for the next Pasteurs to stop their work by asserting that fighting poverty is morally superior to scientific research.

Mr. Victor also criticizes President Bush's attention to the supposedly trivial question of stem cell research as inconsistent with Bush's claimed desire to protect human life. According to Mr. Victor, if Bush were serious about this claim, he would be more concerned with the supposedly much more important task of alleviating world poverty. Mr. Victor thus alleges that the "President's actions are not consistent with his rhetoric." However, Mr. Victor hypocritically fails to apply the same standard to himself. If Mr. Victor's actions were consistent with his rhetoric, he would not be paying $35,000 per year to attend Princeton, but would instead have joined the Peace Corps and donated that money to help alleviate as much human suffering as possible. If Mr. Victor is truly serious in his views, then he and everyone else on campus who agrees with them should ask themselves this: Why is it more important to get a Princeton education than to fight poverty? I eagerly await the response. Eric Harkleroad is a physics major from Overland Park, Kan. He can be reached at eharkler@princeton.edu.