OPINION:
When Susan Monarez, as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said she “refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts,” she likely spoke her convictions from the perspective of the scientific medical establishment. Perhaps her reality clashed with true science.
The application of science in society has two competing narratives on whether drugs are the best means of achieving public health and whether cultural ethics or personal choice should dominate.
The mainstream scientific culture urges Americans to rely on conventional medicine and pharmaceutical treatments to stay healthy, and this includes pushing childhood vaccines. The Make America Health Again and the “health freedom” movements, by contrast, have more natural approaches, relying on alternative, holistic and functional providers, herbalists and nutrition for staying healthy. These two completely different worlds may often conflict, but the biggest difference is that one world claims to have all the answers because “the science is settled.”
Yet science, at its core, is a tool. It is a useful tool for understanding reality, but it cannot answer all questions about existence, health or human flourishing. The strict defense of “science” applied in the context of public health and through widespread, popular catchphrases asserting that government, CDC or a particular scientist’s interpretation of science “saves lives” is highly problematic.
This is because we know that CDC recommendations are based on the views of certain individuals in leadership positions and advisories, who often apply utilitarian or “greater good” ethics. Recalling the trolley problem, taking a “greater good” or “lesser evil” approach is highly problematic because it guarantees that certain people will inevitably suffer so that others might be saved. In the case of vaccine recommendations, it also means that most of the public will bear the costs and consequences of the government’s decision.
Even if clinical trials are large enough to show that a product is “safe,” that does not make it safe and effective for any one person. Vaccines, like any other drug or any medical treatment, have risks and trade-offs that are often not known before they are administered. The Supreme Court case Bruesewitz v. Wyeth and the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program acknowledge these risks by stating that vaccines are “unavoidably unsafe.”
If facts reveal that what was considered “safe and effective” was in fact neither, vaccine public health campaigns would be one of the worst human atrocities in modern history.
What makes this so much more insidious? The active suppression of treatments and remedies that can help. Automatic “pseudo-science” or “anti-science” labeling of reputable scientists and physicians who have dared to question or dissent from mainstream “science” or have recommended differently, especially concerning vaccines, is how we got to this war today. It’s also why some people perish for a lack of knowledge or the ability to speak freely and think differently.
Some of the greatest scientists and innovators were considered heretical during their time and discredited by their peers and the public. This happened to Ignaz Semmelweis, the pioneer of antiseptic procedures, and Ludwig Boltzmann, the original formulator of the entropy equation.
Similarly, becoming a Nobel laureate does not make one impervious to medical abuse. Antonio Egas Moniz, who developed the prefrontal lobotomy, earned the 1949 Nobel Prize for his discovery. Lobotomies were considered the standard of care for treating mental disorders and were initially portrayed as “good,” “safe” and “effective.” Today, we can agree that this procedure is undoubtedly cruel.
Hence, science is not “truth,” nor is it free from “politics.” The politics of science have so much more to do with which ideas get platformed or repressed and labeled as misinformation. The academic use of rhetoric and labels to control perception of reality must stop for real answers to emerge.
We need to heal science, and that starts by publishing hidden research, unlabeling good researchers and inspiring active conversations on scientific controversies so people can think freely and choose differently.
• Diana Lutfi, JD, MSHCM, CPHQ, is the founder of Healing Science Policy Institute (stemming from the 5,000+ physicians, scientists, and health care providers who coalesced in support of RFK), University of California, Berkeley, and University of Denver alumni, and an independent health care policy expert.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.