One hundred years ago this month, the Scopes trial was held in Dayton, Tenn. For 11 days, jurors heard arguments about John Scopes, a high school teacher who had taught the theory of evolution in apparent violation of the Butler Act, a state law that made it illegal for public school teachers to introduce theories that contradicted the Biblical creation story. The trial, which featured celebrated attorneys Clarence Darrow defending Scopes and erstwhile presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan leading the prosecution, was widely publicized and sparked a national conversation about the tensions between science and religion — and government’s role between the two. Then, as now, the controversy was fed by a sense of paranoia and social anxiety over rapid cultural change. In the end, Scopes was convicted, which was later overturned on appeal. But the case took on legendary status, being dramatized in the play and film “Inherit the Wind,” and despite Scopes’ conviction, coming to be seen as a significant victory for science.
Since then, the right-wing in America has intermittently conducted an assault on science that, with the ascent of the religious right, gelled into an all-out war around the early 1980s. Many conservatives have, over the last 40 years, opposed AIDS research, stem cell research, basic facts about climate change — and legislation to address it — and measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
It seems the administration and its allies in Congress want to set the United States back a century — back to the time of the Scopes trial.
Under President Donald Trump, the GOP has decided to go nuclear. The federal government’s support of science and medicine is being systematically destroyed by devastating cuts to research, agencies and staff. It seems the administration and its allies in Congress want to set the United States back a century — back to the time of the Scopes trial.
Scientific advances have long met with resistance from many cultural conservatives. For numerous GOP voters, this suspicion is tied to religious fundamentalism and the very crux of the Scopes trial — that the theory of evolution contradicts the Bible and is, therefore, blasphemous. Denying that basic understanding of the natural world makes, in their minds, many scientific breakthroughs suspect.
But the war on science isn’t just about religion or common mistrust. This phenomenon is also related to the Republican Party’s fealty to businesses like the fossil fuel industry, which requires denial of climate change to reduce competition from renewable energy sources. This view has helped to perpetuate the right-wing conspiracy theory of weather manipulation — that the extreme weather events the country has been experiencing, such as the recent Texas flood, are caused by the deep state geoengineering the weather.
There has long been a conservative faction that wished to slash taxes and hoped to end support for science in the public sector. These people believe that business should pick up the slack, and they have refused to acknowledge that much of the basic research that leads to breakthroughs in science and technology, some of which results in dead ends and disappointing outcomes, do not immediately make a profit and are therefore unlikely to be pursued.
Then there is the traditional right-wing suspicion toward government, which causes many to be hostile to any public health or environmental regulations. Most recently, we saw that ideology play out during the pandemic, when many on the right opposed temporary restrictions of everyday activities and even vaccines to stop the spread of COVID-19. The fall-out from that devastating event looks like it’s going to haunt the country for some time to come.
The disastrous cuts to science and medicine are happening at all levels of the federal government, and they are impacting every agency. Especially catastrophic, for the lives of millions both in the U.S. and around the world, is what’s happening with biomedical research.
The administration’s attacks on universities for spurious political reasons are affecting many research projects that would otherwise lead to treatments and cures for deadly diseases. Appointing the Four Horseman of the Scientific Apocalypse — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of health and human Services, Dr. Mehmet Oz to run Medicare and Medicaid services, Dr. Marty Makary as head of the FDA and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya to run the National Institutes of Health — has signaled the end of any serious approach to biomedical science and public health by the federal government. The individual histories of these men as a dangerous conspiracy theorist, a quack cure TV huckster, an eccentric contrarian and an ethically-challenged partisan have sent shockwaves through the scientific community. Together and separately, they have taken a wrecking ball to our august scientific institutions that were previously considered to be the best in the world.
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Even as Kennedy, Oz, Makary and Bhattacharya work to dismantle valuable scientific research and disease prevention measures, they are quick to admonish Americans to stay healthy. “Don’t eat carrot cake,” Oz recently admonished Medicaid recipients. “Eat real food.”
Kennedy also chimed in with a patriotic plea. “This administration wants to encourage Americans to take control of their health — to eat right, to have lifestyle changes that save us all. And that’s the patriotic thing to do, not only for our country but for every individual American. It’s a patriotic duty to keep ourselves healthy.”
This is the caliber of American scientific expertise we now have in charge. Sure, we should all eat better and exercise. And it’s great that the U.S. is finally getting rid of the food dyes that the European Union banned years ago. But much of what they are spouting is self-help, internet based, anecdotal nonsense.
Meanwhile, after warning us against the dangers of carrot cake, these luminaries are strangling research into mRNA vaccines, one of the potentially greatest advances in medical research in a century — all because of crank conspiracy theories about the mRNA COVID shots. The consequences are tragic. As the Guardian reported this week:
Research on mRNA cancer vaccines has been under way for more than a decade, with more than 120 clinical trials on treating and preventing cancers. mRNA shots have shown promise for preventing the return of head and neck cancer; lymphoma; breast cancer, which accounts for 11.6% of all cancer deaths in the US; colorectal cancer; lung cancer; and kidney cancer, among others.
Pancreatic cancer has a 10% survival rate and is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in the US, but in a small study, about half of the patients who received an mRNA vaccine did not see their cancer return, and they still had strong immune responses three years later.
Early mRNA vaccine trials also indicated the recurrence of melanoma could be cut in half. And a small study co-authored by Sayour on glioblastoma showed the vaccines started affecting the tumors within 48 hours.
All of that is at risk now. The NIH is dismissing dozens of grant reviewers for mRNA research, leaving them understaffed and without the necessary expertise to assess the data. They have cancelled $766 million in contracts to develop mRNA vaccines against potential pandemic flu viruses. The consequences will be deadly.
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It’s too much to expect these people to care about the lives that won’t be saved because of their antediluvian attitudes toward modern science. But they usually care about money. Economist Paul Krugman points out that “two first-rate economists, David Cutler and Ed Glaeser, have made a stab at estimating the impact of cuts at NIH. Their analysis suggests that these cuts might save $500 billion in federal spending over the next 25 years — while imposing more than $8 trillion in losses.”
A century after the Scopes trial, it seems we might not have learned that much at all. The right has rarely been interested in long-term thinking. But the country used to let scientists and researchers think about it for us and deliver the fruits of their labor for our common benefit, which included saving countless lives. This approach served us very well for over a century. Now it seems we’re just going to tell people it’s their patriotic duty to be healthy and leave it at that.
