Shout

 

Shout
Shout
Let it all out
These are the things I can do without
Come on
I'm talking to you
Come on

In violent times
You shouldn't have to sell your soul...

Forty years ago Tears for Fears released "Shout". I hadn't thought of the track in years but today as scientists and others gather to rally for science in the face of the cuts proposed by the current administration's unelected minions I find it running through my mind. Can we shout, make ourselves heard above the maelstrom that we are living through?

I am committed in the current moment to being noisy where I can. Like a great wind blowing, the current events are snatching our voices, drowning out the cries of the poor, the marginalized, the hungry, the sick, and the suffering with their drum beat of lies. The beating drums are meant to frighten, to shock into silence, to bewilder.

I wrote the op-ed that follows, which appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer last month. I woke up at 3:45 in the morning with the question running through my head, "Is this what you voted for?" 

Know a Trump voter? Ask them, be specific. Did you vote for an increase in pediatric cancer deaths? Are you willing to forgo treatment with anything developed using funding by the NIH? Really? Have you have had shingles? No? You got the shot? Great, NIH funded. 

Shout.

The op-ed:

“This is what the people voted for.”or so we hear from the White House with each slashed program. But is it? Did people really vote to tear apart the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and lay waste to the nation’s scientific infrastructure? Perhaps you did, wondering what we get for our $48 billion every year.

I know what I have gotten: my life back. The pioneering work that led to the drug that I take for a neurodegenerative disease was done at the NIH, by a foreign scientist here on a visa. Without that drug I struggle to write on the blackboard, walk down the hallway, or even brush my teeth. It's not a cure, but with it I can work full time — and pay the taxes that help support the NIH.

I also know what others have gotten. When a teen-aged friend died of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) in the 1970s, survival rates were about 25%. Now 90% of children with ALL survive thanks in part to research supported by the NIH. 

A study by Ekaterina Cleary, Matthew Jackson, and Edward Zhou published in JAMA in 2023 showed that nearly every drug approved by the FDA between 2010 and 2019 was touched by NIH funding. Shingrix to prevent the misery of shingles. Dulaglutide to control blood sugar in type 2 diabetics. Stelara for Crohn’s disease. Lifesaving drugs for cancer, including Keytruda and aflibercept. My own research into the mechanism by which the anti-cancer drug taxol works was funded in part by the NIH.

Private investment in pharmaceutical research cannot replace the NIH. The work done by academic scientists is not proprietary and can be shared widely, amplifying the effect of our government investment. Commercial companies have a responsibility to shareholders, they cannot take as much of a risk as NIH funded projects can. Not every research project on lizard saliva will lead to a block buster drug (as it did for Ozempic) but some will. We need both public investment and the private sector to continue to be world leaders in health care.

But you voted to get rid of”wokeness” not real science, you say? The US has a high maternal and infant mortality rate, appallingly so for black women. Cancelling the research related to race keeps us from understanding why these disparities exist and what to do about them. Women and babies will continue to die. 

If ending public investment in biomedical research in the US is what you hoped for when you voted in the 2025 presidential election, then I expect you to look me in the eye and tell me you voted for me to be disabled and unemployed. I hope you can explain to your neighbor why her grandchild was stillborn and her daughter dead. Or tell your father that no cure for your mother’s Alzheimer’s disease is coming anytime soon. Because that’s what you voted for.

If this isn’t what you voted for, then I urge you to call your congressperson and your senator and tell them so. Before it's your life on the line.

___________

Photo is of molecular model of L-3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine, L-DOPA, the standard of care for Parkinson's.