More than 1,900 members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine have signed an open letter warning the Americans of the “danger” of attacks by the Trump administration against science.
The letter comes in the middle of the implacable assault of the administration against American scientific institutions which included threats to private universities, federal cancellations of subsidies and ideological financing exams, mass grassuation, resignation and censorship.
“We see a real danger right now”, ” the letter States. “We have various political convictions, but we are united as researchers wanting to protect an independent scientific investigation. We send this SOS to seem a clear warning: the country’s scientific company is decimated. ”
The National Academies of Sciences were created by an act of congress in 1863, during the administration of Abraham Lincoln.
Today, the organization works as a non -profit organization with two additional academies under its charter – the national academies of engineering and medicine. Academies are considered to represent American scientific excellence and claim together more than 6,800 members elected between peers between the three branches.
“The administration reduces the financing of scientific agencies, ending the subsidies to scientists, finance their laboratories and hinders international scientific collaboration,” said the letter.
“The financing reductions oblige institutions to suspend research (including the studies of new treatments on diseases), to reject teachers and to stop registering graduate students – the pipeline for the next generation scientists.”
The letter continued: “The quest for truth – the mission of science – requires scientists freely exploring new questions and honestly signal their results, regardless of special interests. Change, or which gives results that he does not like, on subjects ranging from vaccine safety to economic trends. »»
Scientific institutions have experienced major upheavals since the start of this Trump administration and it is feared that the cuts are in preparation For privatization.
Last week, the Secretary of Health, Robert F Kennedy Jr, announced that the administration would seek to reduce a total of 20,000 jobs of the Ministry of Health and Social Services (HHS), or approximately a quarter of the ministry’s workforce. Branches with imminent losses include agencies that are familiar names in the United States, including Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Kennedy, a conspiracy theorist who was once the most skeptical of the vaccine vaccine, also attacked the country’s vaccination policies – emitting Lukewarm support For Measles plans despite a Current epidemic; threaten who underlies the COVVI-19 vaccines; Cancel a contract of nearly $ 600 million to study the potential processing of the bird flu and cancel the meetings of expert scientific advisers.
The best expert in the government vaccine, Dr. Peter Marks at the FDA, resigned during the weekendcontesting the administration “unprecedented assault against scientific truth”.
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“It has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the secretary,” wrote Marks in his letter of resignation. “But he rather wants a subordinate confirmation of his disinformation and his lies.”
Environmental sciences have also seen attacks. The administration sought to cut more than 1,100 scientists Because it dissolves the research and development office of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The administration also seeks to cut up to a fifth of the workforce of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the agency may be better known to the Americans for having planned hurricanes.
“The country’s scientific company is being canceled and the silence of too much of our scientific leaders only allow the current disaster,” said Dr. Robert Steinbrook, director of the health research group at Public Citizen, a consumer defense group.
“The” SOS “signal of 1,900 scientists must be alarm clock for our main scientific and medical organizations to show courage and express themselves at this critical moment,” he said. “If scientists and scientific and medical organizations will not be clear to defend science and public health, which will do it? There is no alternative.”
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