JOHN EDWARDS

摘要

John edwards made a fortune as a personal-injury lawyer in the 1980s and was ]ohn Kerry's vice president on the unsuccessful Democratic presidential ticket in 2004. But this year, he is campaigning as a populist and a Washington outsider. The son of mill workers, Edwards pounds away at the "big, powerful interests," the "corrupt," and the "very greedy" in his standard stump speech. The 54-year-old former North Carolina senator (1998-2004) wants to make sweeping changes, some of which would affect research. He would end what he calls the "antiscience" practices of George W. Bush's Administration-such as "censoring research and slanting policy on climate change, on air pollution, on stem cell research." And he would increase science funding. Despite such promises, however, biomedical researchers who remember the malpractice lawsuits that Edwards championed 2 decades ago-some of which were based on questionable science-are wary.