The Consequences of Corrupting and Politicizing Science
By: Jerry M Lawson, De Omnibus Dubitandum
Tags: Culture, Life Lessons, Science, Politics, Life

Photo by CDC on Unsplash

December 2020 has the distinction of recording some of the deadliest days in U.S. history. We recorded more deaths than occurred at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, several more than the 2,977 who perished on September 11, 2001, during the post-Thanksgiving surge. More than 17,000 Americans died in one week in December, and total deaths since March topped 300,000. Most of those lost loved ones should never have died. We have nothing and no one to blame but ourselves.

We are in the middle of a pandemic. Healthcare providers are overworked, exhausted, underpaid, underappreciated, exposed to, and having to witness death as a norm. Almost half of Americans ignore their plight, passing off the COVID-19 virus as fake. Our hospitals are filling and overflowing. At this moment, more people die every day as perished on 9–11, 2001. Despite warnings, despite science and the urgings of authorities, many refuse to wear a simple mask. Why is this possible?

The behavior has a long history that has slowly evolved over the last 50 or more years. We get a clue from the anti-vaxxer movement, but it is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Anti-vaxxers are part of a loosely-organized conspiracy theorist subculture. They blame the medical practice of vaccinations for a wide range of health problems, including autism. It is a view shared by many, including the current president, but from whence did this suspicion and disbelief in science arise?

It’s of no surprise the same people who comprise the anti-vaxxer movement express disbelief in the coronavirus or any vaccine created to vaccinate the public to curtail its spread. Many dismiss anything they hear from media or, more disturbing, from scientists and other sources of authority and knowledge that contradict their world view. Many, but not all, of these doubters, lack having education beyond high school.

This large body of unbelievers has to be seen in the context of the anti-science, anti-intellectual, and generally anti-authority time in which we live. There is a bit of history being ignored. We didn’t arrive in this place and predicament by accident.

I am lucky enough to have grown up during a time when we trusted science. There was goodwill leftover from World War II. The Cold War was at its height. We cooperated and saw ourselves on the same team regardless of our politics. Not long after beginning seventh grade in the fall of 1957, our classes were interrupted, herded to the gym, and inoculated with the Salk vaccine for polio. No one complained. No one refused. There is a big difference between seeing yourself as part of the community and seeing yourself as an entity to yourself, the mythical rugged individual.

The genesis for what we are seeing today can be found in corporate-promoted research. Studies funded with the expressed purpose of showing the desired outcome favorable to whatever product that corporation was developing. There are ample examples available online or in books for anyone wanting more information. My purpose is to try and shine a little light in the dark corner.

The corrupting and politicizing of science over the past 50 years happened on many levels. Colleges and universities have increasingly had to seek funding from whatever sources were available. Public institutions have experienced a long decline in state support resulting in large corporations, foundations, and other private interests stepping in to fill the gaps. However, this funding comes at a price. It is not unusual to see research projects funded by corporate sources being conducted without regulation or oversight. It raises a lot of troubling questions.

In the end, it raises concerns about the reliability and accuracy of what is purportedly science and scientific research provided to the public through journalistic outlets. It also raises questions and doubts about the messengers, the journalists, as well. The whole system is jeopardized because we allowed the market or quest for profits to pervert the science we rely upon. Once the accuracy of science or any structure we trust is compromised, its value is depreciated, called into doubt, and ultimately ignored. This is where we are today.

Sadly, we are now in a place where large numbers of us reject all information or authority that fails to conform to our version of the truth. We reject science. We are suspicious of and refuse vaccines. We engage in behaviors without any real idea of what kind of suffering — physically or mentally, our actions and behavior impose on others. Too many of us think only of “my” rights without regard to the rights of others, particularly their children. They fail to understand that “my” rights do not and cannot be allowed to impinge upon anyone else’s rights. The interests of the community weigh heavily in such matters.

When I read about or hear someone refuse to wear a simple mask to protect themselves and others from the COVID-19 virus, I think back to what happened to my mother. She was a 10-year-old elementary student in early January 1924 when she came home from school sporting sniffles and a cough. Her parents thought it was no more than a cold and paid no more attention, and her symptoms never became anything more severe.

She joined in play, as she was fond of doing, with her three-year-old brother. But this was no ordinary sniffle. Unknown to my mother or my grandparents, she was infected with a lethal bacterium known as diphtheria. My mother was asymptomatic. Her little brother and her older sister were infected. The family was quarantined with notices nailed to the front door forbidding anyone from entering or leaving. All my grandparents could do was treat and comfort their children as best they could, hope, and pray for recovery.

The disease progressed rapidly. Mother’s little brother died, and her sister was expected to join him, but recovered. Throughout, Mother never exhibited more than a slight cough and sniffles. She remembered that when her brother passed away, the casket was displayed in the front window where friends and family could view it. That is the way things were done in the early 1920s. Vaccines were few, scarce, and virtually unaffordable for most working families.

Years later, my mother endured more trauma and heartache with the loss of her first-born son to polio. It left an indelible mark. I never understood what seemed to me as my mother’s unnatural concerns about polio. Her memory of diphtheria and polio evoked fear she inadvertently revealed by cautioning me in my activities during every summer of my childhood. It was a behavior I never grasped until I was older and could connect the dots.

Science deniers, anti-vaxxers, and others have grown up in a world free of most childhood and other diseases that once took a savage toll on our young. Being ignorant and unaware of the consequences, unbelievers are devoid of such fears.

I will get vaccinated when the opportunity comes. I am mindful of those on all sides who deny overwhelming scientific research and data. Their refusal to wear a simple mask and have themselves and their children vaccinated imposes a potential peril on the rest of us. The opposition generated by disbelief in the science, fears of autism, alleged religious grounds, or other excuses doesn’t matter compared to the suffering their selfishness and ignorance causes.

But let us not forget the underlying cause that has brought us to where we are. Our lust for profit, gain, and crass materialism at any expense is putting us and our planet in peril so a few can live in pretentious opulence.

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