Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the new director of the National Institutes of Health, just announced the cancellation of more than $500 million in research contracts for RNA-based medical treatments because of a "lack of public trust." Many have already pointed out that this decision is breathtakingly deceitful coming from someone who created and nurtured much of that distrust. Others note that it proves Bhattacharya's faulty understanding of basic science. Still others have compared him to previous "leaders" who fearfully backed down before the loud detractors of earlier medical breakthroughs like penicillin, smallpox vaccination and surgical anesthesia. But I see something far worse than duplicity, stupidity or fear in this bewildering diktat.
After leaving the laboratory to pursue science journalism and publishing, I lucked into a junior reporter gig at a news journal that covered science for scientists. I was assigned the HIV/AIDS beat as part of my responsibilities and, being the early 1990s, there was a lot of news to report on. And, being one of only several dedicated HIV/AIDS writers in Washington, D.C., I had a front row seat for not just the science, but also the policies and personalities that came together around this plague.
The science that has come out of the AIDS epidemic is, simply, astounding. One must remember that it was not just the virus being studied, but also the human immune system and its response to the virus. Our knowledge of our own built-in protections against the microbial world was incredibly limited prior to HIV, but because of the huge research push sparked by the virus, we quickly learned about:
* Different types and actions of T cells and their interactions with other immune cells we didn't even know existed;
* How chronic immune activation and inflammation disrupts heart, brain and gut, and even promotes cancer;
* How to find (and even design) targeted drugs without side-effects worse than the infection itself;
* The immune responses that a successful vaccine needs to elicit.
These and literally hundreds of other scientific insights were gained from HIV/AIDS research over the past 30-40 years. And most of them are applicable to many other human diseases. Perhaps most apt here is the development of the mRNA-based COVID vaccine, which spared millions of lives (despite inane resistance) as a direct result of this earlier work.
But it was not just great science. It was great science undertaken by a huge coalition of different people that came together to push the boundaries of medical applications of the new knowledge. As a science writer, I was not only immersed in laboratory research efforts, but also deeply connected to the HIV/AIDS activist community, particularly several of the leaders of the ACT-UP-derived Treatment Action Group. These people, most of whom were fighting for their own lives, turned themselves into immunologists and drug developers, often understanding the science better than the professionals they alternately cajoled, supported, and attacked. They were driven, demanding, funny, intelligent and often difficult. But they were also true seekers of applied knowledge and earned their place of honor at the table with the "real" scientists working on HIV/AIDS. I still miss several of them tremendously: They were not just sources, they were friends.
The coalition of fighters goes even deeper than the formal scientists and activists. As a volunteer "buddy" at the local HIV/AIDS clinic in D.C., I saw AIDS patients and their biological or chosen families and caregivers suffer together through rare cancers, blindness, dementia and other diseases that feasted on their bodies as their immunity failed. The selflessness of so many of these people, who took part in clinical trials of new drugs and procedures that they knew would benefit future patients more than themselves, was beyond humbling. These people, along with the leading activists and dedicated scientists, gifted us with all the knowledge of human immunity that we have today.
Our country's leaders are rejecting all that science by blaming the public for a lack of support. In their malignant absurdity, they are also rejecting the sacrifices and sorrows of all the people who have helped piece together that knowledge at high personal cost. This capriciousness is far worse than just duplicity, stupidity or fear. But the only words I can think of to accurately describe their actions are unprintable in this forum.