My March for Science
By the time the Metro from the Shady Grove station in Maryland had reached its second stop it was full of demonstrators for The March for Science. By the third stop I had met one of the nation’s foremost immunologists: he works on a rare form of cancer at the National Cancer Institute. I met a young couple from Hershey PA —he a grade school science teacher and she in criminal justice—and their signs were anti-fracking and cleverly close to obscene (FRACK THIS YOU…). My sign said: And yet the sea rises! channeling Galileo’s And yet it moves!. I thought that would be unique, but other demonstrators knew about Galileo and they had me beat for artistry.
Leaving the Metro I walked toward the Mall and saw the Washington Monument, the center of activities. A line of demonstrators was neatly queued, no matter the steady rain, in front of the EPA building (The William Jefferson Clinton Building, no less). They were waiting to pose, defiantly, with fists raised, by the EPA’s bronze plaque, as if to say this agency, (founded by Richard Nixon) is here to stay. That is not clear to me.
I met an elderly woman in a wheel chair with a picture of Albert Einstein and a caption that read “Refugee fleeing genocide” and the familiar E=mc2. I talked to a young woman whose sign said, “Midwives for Evidence Based Medicine: Vaccines Work.” A lot of signs had the word “evidence” in them. One poster said: Science is Real: Your Alternative Facts are . For those who have forgotten high school algebra, me included, there is no square root of minus 1. Minus 1 squared is 1. The crowd seemed proudly nerdy and certain that the work they do is valuable.
There was a security perimeter around the Washington Monument and to get to it we formed a long curling line, with the already iconic Museum of African- American History and Culture on our left and the Washington Monument on the right, at least from our perspective. The line snaked along, seemingly positioned between the two. It was the image of the day for me because it encapsulated the resilience of the American experience.
If there was a theme it was that government officials should not create facts by decree, any more than Pope Urban VIII could tell Galileo that the sun moved around the earth. There was anger at Scott Pruitt, the new Administrator of the EPA, who has said that carbon dioxide emissions do not cause global warming and that the United States should exit the Paris agreements. He is wrong about the carbon and it is unlikely that the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate agreements. There is enough diplomatic stress in the world without adding to it, which withdrawal would cause. At least that is my guess.
The EPA’s websites for pollution data are being shut down. Sections of the website, some concerning the Obama Clean Power program, are under renovation. Reducing the restrictions on coal-fired power plants will not bring the industry back. The old pages, some containing pollution data for every city and region in the country have been archived.
There are many agencies of the government that do critical research, but in the biomedical area it is the National Institutes of Health that worried the marchers the most. The proposed cuts amount to $8 billion and 20% of the NIH budget, which funds basic and clinical research and training in universities and medical centers all over the country, as well as an intramural program on its campuses near Washington. It is by far the largest supporter of biological and medical research in the world. It has been going strong since the 1950s and has resulted in the most successful biomedical research complex and industry in the world. It cannot stand a 20% cut if we want to continue to be first in the world and support our immense investment in universities and industry.
Three columns on the politics of science are enough for the moment. Next we will return to Ebola virus, Zika virus, sickle cell anemia, and spinal muscular atrophy and ask what the NIH and others are doing about these threats. A lot, if we let them.
Richard Kessin is Professor Emeritus of Pathology and Cell Biology at Columbia University. He lives in Norfolk CT and can be contacted at rhk2@columbia.edu.