As I was driving him to school today, my 7th grade son wanted to talk about science and what he was learning about the thinker and scientist, Gallileo. My son was amazed how this man and his new discoveries and his promotion of the Copernican doctrine had been met with hostility and mistrust from the tiny, threatened minds of the church and its subsequent Inquisition which, at the time, dictated what could and could not be called historical or scientific “fact”. His then-radical theory which proposed that while two dissimilarly-weighted objects, if dropped, might fall at different rates on Earth, the same objects, in an airless atmosphere, would both hit the ground at the same time.

The Church, incensed that Galileo would dare to challenge the “wisdom” of the day concerning gravity as well as his theory that the Sun– not the Earth–was the center of the universe, felt Galileo was nothing less than a heretic. After 18 days of formal interrorgation (and using threats of torture), Galileo confessed under duress that he may have worded his support for the Copernican case a little too strongly. Despite this, he was placed under house arrest in 1633 where he remained until his death in 1642.

At the end of the last Apollo 15 moon walk (1971), a live demonstration was performed before the television cameras by Commander David Scott using a feather and a geologic hammer. Because the atmosphere on the moon did not provide the same air resistance that one finds on our planet, both objects–released at the same time– fell at the same rate and landed at the same time. Despite this very public demonstration which is preserved on tape, the Church did not see fit to formally reverse its stance on Galileo’s theories until 1983. You read it right, people…1983!!

My son was aghast that anyone would be treated in such a manner for merely encouraging the broadening of intellectual thought and for daring to promote new scientific theories. I told him that this was why his father and I are such strong advocates of the Separation of Church and State. “No church, regardless of denomination, should have the power to decide what is or is not accepted or studied as scientific or historical fact or to censure those who promote such knowledge,” I said. “It would be tremendously naive to believe that what happened to Galileo could not still happen, in some form or other, in our country now.”

You think I’m being an alarmist? Then consider the following two things:

1) The steady encroachment of fundamentalism in this country. Make no mistake, fundamentalism means the death of intellectual growth, regardless of which religion it attaches itself to. There are people being elected to the highest of public offices who maintain that Abraham lived to be several hundred years old and that the world, according to their religious views, is only 6,000 years old. Especially worrisome are the words of Evangelical guru and former head hypocrite of the National Association of Evangelicals, Ted Haggard. Haggard, who “was asked to leave” his post after it was revealed that, despite his attacks on homosexuality, he had engaged in a three year sexual relationship with a male prostitute who also sold him methanphetamines. (Yes….THAT Ted Haggard!) The evangelist, in a taped interview, warned esteemed British ethologist/evolutionist, Richard Dawkins, that it wouldn’t be long before the majority of people understood the 6,000 year theory to be TRUTH. If that doesn’t frighten you, then I have a “science textbook” to show you that is used by fundamentalist homeschooling parents here in Texas. I hope I’m dead when the day comes that public school teachers are required to teach your child that there were pairs of dinosaurs on the ark and that Noah used bags of fireflies to light the dark lower chambers of his watercraft.

2) The present administration just made it legal for the government to torture people. The same government that is presently led by men who–if one believes the public boasts of Haggard–lend their ear to Pastor Ted (who claimed he spoke to George Bush on a weekly basis) and others like him.

NOW are you scared? You ought to be.

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When I saw a link from And We Shall March to an article titled, “She’s her own twin,” I had to click on it.

Fairchild’s fight for her kids began when she was 26-years-old, unemployed and applying for public assistance in Washington state. Everyone in her family had to be tested to prove they were all related.

The Department of Social Services called Fairchild and told her to come in immediately. What Fairchild thought was a routine meeting with a social worker turned into an interrogation. The proud mother was suddenly a criminal suspect.

“As I sat down, they came up and shut the door, and they just went back and just started drilling me with questions like, ‘Who are you?’” Fairchild said. The DNA test results challenged everything she knew about her family. Yes, her boyfriend was the father of the children, and, yes, they were all related, according to the DNA, except for Fairchild. She was told she wasn’t the mother.

What do you know–she’s her own twin, the result of a rare medical condition called chimerism which results when two fertilized eggs fuse in the womb and grow into one individual. And because of it she almost lost custody of her own kids; at the eleventh hour, her lawyer found out about this condition from independent research and had her tested for it.

The state was still so suspicious of Fairchild that when she gave birth to another child, a court officer stood in the delivery room to witness an immediate DNA test.

“They took DNA from the baby and myself right then and there, after birth, and it came back that there is no way possible that baby is mine,” Fairchild said.

Even though they’d witnessed the birth, officials believed she was acting as a surrogate, possibly bearing a child for money.

Fairchild’s attorney was determined to solve the mystery. That’s when he came across Keegan’s chimera story in the New England Journal of Medicine.

“I asked the judge to postpone the case until these tests could be done,” Tindell said.

After the tests were done, there was proof that Fairchild was her own twin as well. The judge finally believed Fairchild was the biological mother of her children and dismissed the case.

“I probably wouldn’t have my kids today if they didn’t discover her situation. They wouldn’t have known to even consider me as a chimera,” Fairchild said.

?‚? Is science the villain or the hero of this story?

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