One of the nation’s most prestigious prizes in medicine will go to Planned Parenthood. The idea is so egregiously political, one wonders if the prize is truly one based in scientific breakthroughs. Yet, it is. The Lasker Awards, announced by the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation Wednesday, are a notable organization that often paves the way for the winners of the Nobel Prize; each Lasker prize comes with $250,000.
For perspective on how political the Lasker prize has suddenly become this year, another of the three winners were Dr. Douglas R. Lowy and Dr. John T. Schiller, honoring technological advances that helped develop the now-infamous human papillomavirus vaccines. Some of last year’s winners were the folks who discovered “the pathway by which cells from humans and most animals sense and adapt to changes in oxygen availability – a process essential for survival” and DNA replication.
A video announcing the award says Planned Parenthood provided “essential health services and reproductive care to millions of women for more than a century.” Hold up: Is that a scientific breakthrough? While Planned Parenthood does provide some “essential health services” such as contraception, other reports show some clinics hardly provide any and mostly focus on abortion. Take this quick investigative project: Journalists contacted almost 100 clinics and only five provided prenatal services.
For even more perspective, in 2016 alone, there were multiple incredible scientific breakthroughs: Scientists figured out how to use brain training to help paraplegics walk; an algorithm to predict tsunamis was discovered, and a robot carried out the first autonomous soft tissue surgery. Even this year, there were breakthroughs in male infertility, evidence the ozone layer is repairing itself, and an organ transplant breakthrough.
In short: Any number of actual technological breakthroughs in 2016 are more worthy of the award than Planned Parenthood.
Planned Parenthood’s focus and bulk of their income (after federal funding of course) is proffering abortions. Period. Giving an organization an award that murders 300,000 babies a year because they occasionally offer patients contraceptives is like high-fiving a serial killer for murdering four people instead of five.
Of course, Planned Parenthood will continue to perform abortions and offer occasional “health services” — that’s to be expected. What’s unexpected, and more disappointing, is folks who bestow awards to an organization such as this, when they’re typically reserved for pioneering scientific research, just to participate in the game of political aggrandizing.
Nicole Russell is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist in Washington, D.C., who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota. She was the 2010 recipient of the American Spectator’s Young Journalist Award.
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