Let Scientists Guide Scientific Research

Americans have always prided themselves on living in one of the most advanced countries in the world when it comes to discovery and innovation in science, medicine, and technology. We cheer when Americans win Nobel Prizes in these areas. We felt their achievement was ours as well through our shared national identity.
Where did that pride go? How did we reach a point where we accept children dying of measles? It had been irradicated in America by 2000.
We know one cause. The internet. It is a disease when it comes to misinformation. It is a virus that infects people’s minds with doubt that turns to opposition to life-saving vaccines.
Another cause is politics. Playing to the anti-science crowd has gained votes. As long as it is politically advantageous to bash science and medicine, research and its benefits will be threatened.
Our scientific research and discovery are not infallible to failure. They are not immune to fake data or failed trials. But with each lesson learned medical advancements become safer. However, the internet allows people to latch on to the scams and momentary lapses to undermine all science and medicine, leading a growing number of people willing to risk their child’s life when vaccines have proven safe and effective for decades.
A measles outbreak in Texas has expanded to nearly 150 cases. It has claimed the life of a child, and more than 20 people have been hospitalized, the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) reports.
Of those infected, 116 are children 17 years of age or younger. Measles can cause brain damage, birth defects, hearing loss, and pneumonia.
“Due to the highly contagious nature of this disease, additional cases are likely to occur in the outbreak area and the surrounding communities,” the department said.
Of course, the internet being the misinformation machine it is, there are websites now saying that the outbreak was caused by those who were vaccinated. It is an easily proven false claim. Still, some will believe it.
How did this outbreak start? There are a growing number of unvaccinated people, some anti-vaxxers, who are adamantly against vaccines.
Then there are the passive doubters. Those with just enough worry and doubt about the safety of vaccines that they put them off or “shut their eyes,” saying they’ll risk not getting vaccinated, hoping for the best for themselves and their children.
We know that measles outbreaks are constantly occurring in the world. We know it is one of the most infectious viruses that exists. And we know that international travel can bring an infected person from the farthest reaches of the globe to our rural communities in less than a day. It could be one of our residents returning from a business trip or vacation.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says the two-dose measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine available to children in their kindergarten year of school has fallen to 92.7%. That is below the 95% required to establish herd immunity.
Herd immunity creates a threshold at which there are too many dead-ends and too few new people to infect for the virus to gain a foothold, allowing it to become an outbreak.
But then trust in the CDC and the National Institutes of Health (NIH,) two of the premier public health entities in the world, has been undermined. Their promotion of vaccines and warnings about the consequences of not being vaccinated are dismissed.

Scientists should govern
science research grants
Each year, researchers across the country submit grant proposals that panels of experts scrutinize over the course of months until they agree on which are most promising and scientifically sound.
Researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester and the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis receive grants to study cures for deadly, debilitating, and disfiguring diseases. Mayo and the U of M are among 2,500 medical and scientific research institutions in the country that seeking grants annually.
The NIH funds more than 60,000 of those proposals annually, supporting the work of 300,000 scientists in every state and every research area that with the potential to save and improve our lives, Katherine J. Wu writes in an article for The Atlantic magazine.
“The government has funded science and then largely left well enough alone,” she writes. “Scientific agencies have been staffed by scientists; scientists have set scientific priorities; scientists have ensured the integrity of the science that is done, on the theory that scientists know their own complicated, technical, sometimes arcane work best.
“Under that system, science has flourished, turning the government’s investment into technological innovation and economic growth. Every dollar invested in research and development has been estimated to return at least $5 on average—billions annually,” she writes.
NIH research grants helped create the mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines that allowed the U.S. to deploy a vaccine against the deadly virus rapidly. It has advanced cancer research. It has helped develop CRISPR, a gene-editing technology that could cure sickle cell anemia, some cancers, cystic fibrosis, and muscular dystrophy. “It supported 99% of the drugs approved in the U.S. from 2010 to 2019,” Wu writes.
Now, the funding is shut off or delayed as politicians take over determining what is right to study and what isn’t.
When politicians replace scientists as the gatekeepers for what is meaningful research and what isn’t, it is like letting a 10-year-old get behind the wheel of an Indy 500 race car. A crash is inevitable. But in this case, the injury will be to millions of Americans who have relied on NIH grant-sponsored research to provide lifesaving cures.
Leave the scientists at the CDC and the NIH in charge of grant-making. Let the researchers at the Mayo Clinic, the U of M, and other institutions purse cures and innovations in care that will continue to benefit the American people as well those around the world.