Our new president’s first week of science-impacting executive orders calls for comments from your local medical columnist. They constitute a drastic, unprecedented, and direct attack on science, the foundation of medicine and health care. If extended beyond the Feb. 1 deadline, their effects will impact every community including our own.
Trump administration freezes many health agency reports and online posts | AP News
One executive order calls for an immediate pause on announcements, press releases, social media, and website posts from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which includes the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) weekly Morbidity and Mortality Report (MMWR).
The MMWR has been called “the voice of the CDC,” its primary vehicle for up-to-date, accurate, objective, and useful public health information read by scientists in health care (your doctors and nurses, therapists, etc.), laboratories, researchers, and educators. This week’s halted publication was to be an update on bird flu and constitutes the first interruption of the MMWR since 1960.
About the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) Series | MMWR
A historical example of why this publication is so important:
While a student at the University of Massachusetts Medical School from 1976-80, the MMWR was distributed in every medical student’s mailbox each week. A great mystery was unfolding. Men were developing strange skin cancers and unusual pneumonia.
This early epidemiologic communication led to the discovery of AIDS and its cause, the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). Years of worldwide scientific research led to our understanding of how this virus originated in African chimpanzees and jumped species to infect humans. And decades later, research guided prevention measures and treatment cures.
Scientific research is crucial to the advancement of health care and is neither simple nor fast.
The HHS also oversees the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and The National Institute of Health (NIH). All agencies in HHS were ordered to cancel public appearances, communications, and travel unless for emergencies. This includes scientific meetings, such as the Presidential Advisory Council on Antibiotic Resistance, a vaccine advisory council, and meetings to review applications for fellowships and grants.
According to an internal memo sent to HHS staff, processes will be resumed after presidential appointees review documents and communications for approval and alignment with their policies.
This action, albeit delayed a year due to membership rules, is chilling.
Unraveling and finally controlling HIV, the COVID-19 pandemic, stopping Ebola from escaping Africa (for a truly chilling lesson, read about Ebola), and eradicating polio and smallpox could only have been accomplished through multi-national collaboration.
Viruses don’t give a hoot about political agendas. They will keep infecting whatever and whomever as they are doing right here right now at the peak of flu and respiratory virus season.
Are there problems with the WHO, its processes, and our membership? Probably so as all human organizations, like humans, are imperfect. Is abandoning and isolating the best option for our country?
Or is forcing change by authoritarian action and creating drama and chaos, the incoming administration’s intent? We have observed this modus operandi before. Threaten and manipulate. Slash and burn. Destroy what works albeit imperfectly. Breed chaos and instability. Classic narcissism.
Mental health remains the rejected stepchild of medicine and as such our culture misses such diagnoses of importance as noted above.
With similar blindness, government leaders approved a man with advanced alcohol use disorder, who admits to blackouts and promises not to drink, to lead our Department of Defense. Alcoholics cannot just stop drinking by promising to do so. Addictions are mental health afflictions that don’t just go away without treatment. In the event of a military threat, an alcoholic leader puts our country in a vulnerable position.
The Executive Orders on Sex and Diversity are an attack on the mental health and freedom of those people different than the current leaders of our country. It is our own Declaration of Independence that affirms all are created equal with unalienable rights.
Expect several more executive orders to impact access and cost of health care including:
Rescinding former President Biden’s protections for Medicaid and Affordable Care Act (ACA) accessibility could reduce insurance coverage for many.
Actions to block anti-abortion policies and maternal child health research risk taking us back decades to when coat hangers, back-alley abortions, maternal death, and orphanages were the solutions to unwanted pregnancy. Unlike hack and destroy, women’s rights are being eaten away bite by bite.
Revocations of anti-trust laws and regulatory authority are high on this administration’s agenda.
Are you feeling distraught by the effects of health care consolidation and private equity investment profiting from our bodies? Expect no relief with these laws on the chopping block.
What about drug review and safety? Approval of procedures and therapies unproven but liked by non-scientists? Remove requirements for vaccines in the spirit of personal freedom? The world will be free to experience the recurrence of polio, measles, and diphtheria. The latter two are already happening.
The political business problem with scientific freedom is that discoveries and the truth may conflict with, be inconvenient, unpleasant, and detrimental to financial interests and personal beliefs.
Devoid of unencumbered science we are vulnerable to unsubstantiated theory, folk magic, and voodoo. More history backstepping.
Just this week in our state Senate and House of Representatives, intelligent policy specialists have introduced legislation to control costs of health care in Washington. Those people working in government understand that our institutions are complicated and know that working within a democracy, change is possible however slow. Stay tuned for more on House Bill 1123 and Senate Bill 5083, as they are moving through our democratic state government.
The wisdom of Aristotle (In the 300s B.C.) remains poignant:
“Be a free thinker and don’t accept everything you hear as truth. Be critical and evaluate what you believe in.”
“The more you know, the more you know you don’t know.”
I invite science teachers, government policy specialists, legislatures, and scientists to reach out to me for future columns about how your work is impacted by these policies. Pro or con. I am interested.
Debra L. Glasser, M.D. is a retired internal medicine physician in Olympia. Got a question for her? Write drdebra@theJOLTnews.com
10 comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here
Tish18
excellent. Well written, timely, and very informative.
thank you, Dr. Debra.
Tuesday, January 28 Report this
anothername
As someone who works in public health, I want to thank you.
Wednesday, January 29 Report this
mtndancer
As others have said, timely, and extremely important! I worry about politicians who are ill-informed about science and nature, but who make decisions for all of us every day based on mis- or dis-information. Everything from health care to glaciers needs to be understood!
Thank you for this piece!
Wednesday, January 29 Report this
BevBassett
Millions and millions of Americans voted for this unbalanced malevolent con man--and we are all about to get what those voters believed they wanted.
Wednesday, January 29 Report this
Snevets
Thank you for this information all in one article. I'll be sharing with friends and family.
Wednesday, January 29 Report this
wildnature
Bravo for you writing us this information. And Bravo to JOLT for putting it up. And thank you to all you Souls commenting.
Wednesday, January 29 Report this
nonnanancy
Thank you, Dr. Glasser. You're very reassuring in these crazy times.
Thursday, January 30 Report this
Brookewickham
Hurrah for Dr Debra! Excellent article about chaotic situation with practical recommendations! Keep it up!
Friday, January 31 Report this
ejpoleii
The first part of this op-ed was valid. Communication to the public should not be curtailed. It should, however, not be political but factual. I am not familiar with these government releases so I cannot address them from either a factual or political basis.
Unfortunately, the rest is heavily laced with opinion, not fact. Reduction in medical costs and availability to the populace are political questions, not fact or science. There are many solutions that could achieve these goals, but increased taxes and regulations are not one.
Saturday, February 1 Report this
Zeeko69
As someone who works in healthcare, I am very worried about the next 4 years. The first term of this so-called President, the Chump, Don the Con, was incredibly difficult as a healthcare worker. Folks who voted for him this time seem to have forgotten the way he mishandled the pandemic, and how he sowed confusion and conflict at a time when we ought to have all come together. Chump I was a practice run, and there has been absolutely no accountability for criminal conduct. Now Chump II will be the performance to bring ruin to our democracy. Lack of transparency, undermined trust in information sources, and all of the horrible assaults on human dignity, personal freedoms, and civil liberties are meant to decrease participation in democracy. I'd say let's impeach the SOB, but that was tried twice already with sweet eff-all to show for the effort. I may need to retire early, and devote my time to full time activism. I'd much rather spend my energy and talent trying to make the world a better place, develop the kind of world I want to live in, rather than having to defend common-sense and functioning parts of our complex and overall dysfunctional system against attack. Rather than having to argue what should be obvious - people have a right to healthcare which serves to better their health and wellbeing, healthcare that is driven by the best evidence available, a right to a private relationship with their doctor or provider, and a right to freely express themselves however they want as long as it's NOT infringing on someone else's rights. May heaven help us!
Sunday, February 2 Report this