Free Marc van Roosmalen!!!
Big government has decided it is a better arbiter of science than scientists! It’s absurd! Marc van Roosmalen is a Dutch scientist that has been living in the Amazon for 20 years, he finds new species and names them after his patrons. He is brilliant and is considered by many environmentalists to be one of the defenders of the Amazon. Now the Brazilian government has decided to arrest him on trumped up charges that he had been illegally studying Amazonian species.
Brazilian laws created to protect the nation’s “patrimony” have been stifling research by local and foreign scientists for decades. This absurdist notion that a government should get paid for a larvae’s secretion is at the heart of Lula’s populist politics who in fact has sanctioned more draconian laws than ever in order to tax science. Butterflies, monkeys, and plants do not have passports! They have no nationality and therefore are not subject to our human laws. Butterflies migrate, seeds are carried for thousands of miles in the wind or inside a bird’s stomach, how can one be sure that a Brazilian monkey wasn’t born atop an Argentinean tree before he crossed the border on the back of a Paraguayan turtle?
How incredibly arrogant that a government, with an illiterate president, believe it can dictate science to men and women who have dedicated their lives, intellect and talent to learning and teaching us about our world. Big government, out of control once again, has shot itself in the foot. This obviously seems to be its past-time of choice. Foreign scientists unable to do research in the Brazilian Amazon will go to Suriname or Peru and spend their dollars, euros and pounds over there, and work with scientists from those countries instead, it’s a lose-lose situation.
A blow against science is a blow against all of humanity. Free Marc van Roosmalen!!!
