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GELFAND’S WORLD - Let's start by stating explicitly that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is doing terrible damage to your grandchildren's health through his war against rational medical science. We've made a lot of progress in medicine and science over the past half century, but there is still quite a way to go. Instead, Kennedy is selling snake oil while some of our best scientists are being told to stop what they are doing.
Let's think about how to explain this: Science goes in phases which are spurred by some major discovery or the development of a new technology. It wasn't until midway through the 20th century that the identity of DNA as the hereditary chemical was firmly established. Everything from cellular biology (including cancer research) to Egyptology has been affected by this understanding. The finding was expanded upon, and multiple new subfields spun off.
For example, DNA studies inspired the field of modern molecular immunology, and this field has spun off a whole new class of drugs based on something called the monoclonal antibody (all those new medicines you see in the TV commercials that have a name ending in mab are of this class). For example, one early innovation was used to prolong the lives of breast cancer and stomach cancer patients through its ability to attack a molecule on the cell membrane.
Now as to messenger RNA, RFK Jr.'s latest bugaboo -- The structure and function of messenger RNA was established by the 1950s. Basically, it is the chemical intermediate that takes the information coded in DNA and allows that information to be expressed through proteins. There are tens of thousands of messenger RNAs in a human cell, each providing for some specific kind of function, whether it be muscle or an enzyme that helps digest food or a component of the cell membrane.
Somewhere along the line, a few researchers decided to adapt the messenger RNA structure (mRNA for short) to do something that was theoretically possible, but had not been done successfully, namely the use of a synthetic mRNA to function as a vaccine.
The idea is straightforward, in the sense that it ought to be possible to do this, but there are a lot of details to get right. For example, it would be useful to design the mRNA vaccine to survive long enough to do its job, but not to hang around for months. To use a little jargon, such vaccines should not be highly labile (fall apart really quickly) nor should they be rock stable. This is something that a bit of molecular design can accomplish, but it takes work, money, and time.
The Covid epidemic provided the nudge to take mRNA vaccine research up a notch, which included testing possible variants and -- once an effective version was found -- to ramp up production at a level that could save the world. The fact that there was and it did is a testament to the abilities of modern science.
And there is one more thing that was immediately obvious to any scientist who has followed trends in modern research: The technology may be useful in attacking lots of other problems, ranging from cancer to Alzheimer's Disease to digestive upsets. There are lots of possibilities, and the only way to know if we have some new miracle drugs in our sights is to engage in a lot of trial and error.
So what is RFK Jr. doing in response to real science? You can read about it here. In short, he is killing off half a billion dollars worth of research on mRNA vaccines, and for those who have been following RFK Jr's career, we know this latest decision is not based on science or rationality. It is, as always, based on an anti-scientific view of vaccines based on a remarkable level of ignorance about real science.
Back in the early years of this new century, Salon.com and Rolling Stone published an article called Deadly Immunity that was, in effect, RFK's most visible shot in his anti-vaccine career. Scientist and cancer surgeon David Gorski considered the article and demolished it with his own piece titled Salon.com flushes its credibility down the toilet.
The RFK Jr. article was subsequently retracted by Salon, as you can read here.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is an anti-vaccine crank who doesn't belong in science at all, much less running a scientific establishment. How long are you pro-science Trump supporters going to stay silent on the War Against Science?
A brief aside: The value of science in improving life:
For most of our history, medical science didn't really exist. Surgery, when it could be done, was painful and infectious. The record of the American Civil War includes thousands of amputations done without benefit of anesthesia. And since antibiotics had not been discovered/invented at that time, the result of a gunshot to the arm or the leg was either to die of a wound infection or to endure a wide-awake amputation.
Not everyone lived long enough to enjoy the benefits of 1860s surgical practices. Many children died of diphtheria or some other infectious disease, resulting in mortality that approached fully half of children.
I could go on, but most sane people have heard much of this already. My generation remembers seeing the victims of polio -- many of us know somebody who had it as a kid, and many of them still suffer some of the after-effects.
Or think about childhood leukemia, that used to kill the vast majority of its victims and now is cured in a like proportion.
So let's consider a brief and partial list:
- Childhood leukemia
- The ability to have an operation without pain
- Effective treatments for heart disease
- Increasingly effective treatments for different cancers and some cures
- Effective treatments for exasperating skin disorders (if I believe the tv ads)
- A revolution in diagnostics through imaging and improved biochemistry
This is just the briefest and most partial of lists. There are lots of ailments, and many (if not most) have some genetic component or influence.
Addendum: Foreign governments are playing Trump
You can read it here.
Just what I said, along with so many others. If you are dealing with Donald Trump, say whatever you have to say (as long as it really doesn't cost you anything) to get him to go away. Give him some hollow victory to brag about. The most obvious way to do this is to offer a pledge that private companies (who don't actually have any obligation) will invest billions in the United States. And that's exactly what we have been seeing. Everyone involved understands that you just have to stall for the next three and a half years and you will be home free.
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
