A view shows the MMR vaccine to the City of Lubbock City Department in Lubbock, Texas, US on February 27, 2025.
Photo: Annie Rice / Reuters
In a recent profile In the rampart, Shane Digiovanna described her life with a recessive dystrophic epidermolysis Bullosa, a rare genetic disease which causes a large part of his shear skin of his body, damages his hearing and gives him cancer. It is difficult for him to eat, and even less to work. Genetic therapy could offer a solution one day, but as Digiovanna said, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Elon Musk “could devastate the next decade of research and development of a remedy for the RDEB – my Saint Grail … Keep in mind that weakness and marginalize include infants and children who are mostly lacking in extreme pain and completely. useless. “
When powerful men threaten cancer funding or Alzheimer’s research, they not only eliminate scientific jobs. They put people like Digiovanna in danger.
While confronting the war of administration against scientific research, Digiovanna must also worry about Medicaid, which covers a large part of his care and is ready for important cuts. Even health professionals who provide her care are at risk: a beloved nurse is an immigrant, and although he is an American citizen now, Digiovanna knows that he is still threatened by the ultra-nationalist rhetoric of the vice-president JD Vance. The aspects of the history of Digiovanna will be familiar to anyone with chronic disease or handicap in America; It was certainly for me. I also have a rare genetic disease and although my condition is not as painful or that changes the life as the RDEB, it always means that I am perfectly aware that the progress and the supports that make my life easier are in significant danger. As a journalist, I try to understand the roots of This war on science and public health; As a patient, it is difficult for me to understand why someone would turn away from the vaccinations, antibiotics and research that saved unspeakable lives. People like Digiovanna and I are exceptional in the sense that our conditions are rare, but we do not live our lives in isolation. The same forces that threaten us will also come for everyone.
Behind the war against science and public health is total hostility to the simple concept of social contract. “We are not going to harm our children or (risk) the potential to harm our children so that we can save yours”, an anti-Vaxx mother in western Texas said The Washington Job Last week. It is selfish and dangerous too. An unaccompanied child has already died of measles in Texas and the epidemic may have won another life in New Mexico. But if we want to defend public health, we have to identify her real enemies, and there is a difference between a mother from Texas and someone like Kennedy, who has earned her life and a reputation on the bodies of the dead. His anti-vaccine rhetoric already has a number of bodies. In the years preceding my diagnosis and afterwards, I learned that I could not make my way to health. I needed help: care I could afford, paid disease leave and stable accommodation. America does not guarantee any of these elements.
For decades, pro-business law said that we do not need a social contract; that it is even an obstacle to true prosperity. Instead, we have freedom, that is to say the choice, and it is an attractive story even if it is based on a lie. A figure like Kennedy fits perfectly into the Trump administration because he preaches individual responsibility for the public good. For Kennedy, the solution to chronic disease is a vitamin or a passage on a farm, not healthy sciences or public health institutions. He and his allies agree that the market must be free – to take advantage, force and kill. Science cannot prosper in such an environment, any more than public health. Both are at a constant risk of a ruthless system which requires a constant human sacrifice of the very people he claims to help. It is not strange so that conspiracy theories can be so attractive, because they often start with a certain basic recognition that something is wrong. Anti-Vaxx mothers in Texas are at war with the social contract because they believe that their children are in danger. They are wrong on vaccines, but there are real predators in the midst of us. Pharmaceutical products are expensive, as is health care in general. Why trust the system if it doesn’t work for you anyway?
But cod liver oil cannot cure measles and beef tif is not healthy than seed oils. They offer the illusion of control in a hostile world. People who trust plots and lies can discover what Shane Digiovanna already knows – that we all need science to be healthy. Handicap is not a divine punishment but a condition that can happen to anyone, especially if they are poor. “All those who were born holds double citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick”, Susan Sontag wrote. “Although we prefer to use only the right passport, sooner or later, each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of this other place.” Without functioning safety net, science will vacillate and the kingdom of patients will only develop. The price is human life.