The Nation’s Science and Health Agencies Face a Credibility Crisis: Can Their Reputations Be Restored?
Morale at federal science agencies -- and public trust in their guidance -- is at a concerning low right now.
This article is part of the magazine, "The Future of Science In America: The Election Issue," co-published by LeapsMag, the Aspen Institute Science & Society Program, and GOOD.
It didn't have to be this way. More than 200,000 Americans dead, seven million infected, with numbers continuing to climb, an economy in shambles with millions out of work, hundreds of thousands of small businesses crushed with most of the country still under lockdown. And all with no end in sight. This catastrophic result is due in large part to the willful disregard of scientific evidence and of muzzling policy experts by the Trump White House, which has spent its entire time in office attacking science.
One of the few weapons we had to combat the spread of Covid-19—wearing face masks—has been politicized by the President, who transformed this simple public health precaution into a first amendment issue to rally his base. Dedicated public health officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci, the highly respected director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, have received death threats, which have prompted many of them around the country to resign.
Over the summer, the Trump White House pressured the Centers for Disease Control, which is normally in charge of fighting epidemics, to downplay COVID risks among young people and encourage schools to reopen. And in late September, the CDC was forced to pull federal teams who were going door-to-door doing testing surveys in Minnesota because of multiple incidents of threats and abuse. This list goes on and on.
Still, while the Trump administration's COVID failures are the most visible—and deadly—the nation's entire federal science infrastructure has been undermined in ways large and small.
The White House has steadily slashed monies for science—the 2021 budget cuts funding by 10–30% or more for crucial agencies like National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)—and has gutted health and science agencies across the board, including key agencies of the Department of Energy and the Interior, especially in divisions that deal with issues they oppose ideologically like climate change.
Even farmers can't get reliable information about how climate change affects planting seasons because the White House moved the entire staff at the U.S. Department of Agriculture agency who does this research, relocating them from Maryland to Kansas City, Missouri. Many of these scientists couldn't uproot their families and sell their homes, so the division has had to pretty much start over from scratch with a skeleton crew.
More than 1,600 federal scientists left government in the first two years of the Trump Administration, according to data compiled by the Washington Post, and one-fifth of top positions in science are vacant, depriving agencies of the expertise they need to fulfill their vital functions. Industry executives and lobbyists have been installed as gatekeepers—HHS Secretary Alex Azar was previously president of Eli Lilly, and three climate change deniers were appointed to key posts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to cite just a couple of examples. Trump-appointed officials have sidelined, bullied, or even vilified those who dare to speak out, which chills the rigorous debate that is the essential to sound, independent science.
"The CDC needs to be able to speak regularly to the American people to explain what it knows and how it knows it."
Linda Birnbaum knows firsthand what it's like to become a target. The microbiologist recently retired after more than a decade as the director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, which is the world's largest environmental health organization and the greatest funder of environmental health and toxicology research, a position that often put her agency at odds with the chemical and fossil fuel industry. There was an attempt to get her fired, she says, "because I had the nerve to write that science should be used in making policy. The chemical industry really went after me, and my last two years were not so much fun under this administration. I'd like to believe it was because I was making a difference—if I wasn't, they wouldn't care."
Little wonder that morale at federal agencies is low. "We're very frustrated," says Dr. William Schaffner, a veteran infectious disease specialist and a professor of medicine at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville. "My colleagues within these agencies, the CDC rank and file, are keeping their heads down doing the best they can, and they hope to weather this storm."
The cruel irony is that the United States was once a beacon of scientific innovation. In the heady post World War II years, while Europe lay in ruins, the successful development of penicillin and the atomic bomb—which Americans believed helped vanquish the Axis powers—unleashed a gusher of public money into research, launching an unprecedented era of achievement in American science. Scientists conquered polio, deciphered the genetic code, harnessed the power of the atom, invented lasers, transistors, microchips and computers, sent missions beyond Mars, and landed men on the moon. A once-inconsequential hygiene laboratory was transformed into the colossus the National Institutes of Health has become, which remains today the world's flagship medical research center, unrivaled in size and scope.
At the same time, a tiny public health agency headquartered in Atlanta, which had been in charge of eradicating the malaria outbreaks that plagued impoverished rural areas in the Deep South until the late 1940s, evolved into the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC became the world's leader in fighting disease outbreaks, and the agency's crack team of epidemiologists—members of the vaunted Epidemic Intelligence Service—were routinely dispatched to battle global outbreaks of contagions such as Ebola and malaria and help lead the vaccination campaigns to eradicate killers like polio and small pox that have saved millions of lives.
What will it take to rebuild our federal science infrastructure and restore not only the public's confidence but the respect of the world's scientific community? There are some hopeful signs that there is pushback against the current national leadership, and non-profit watchdog groups like the Union of Concerned Scientists have mapped out comprehensive game plans to restore public trust and the integrity of science.
These include methods of protecting science from political manipulation; restoring the oversight role of independent federal advisory committees, whose numbers were decimated by recent executive orders; strengthening scientific agencies that have been starved by budget cuts and staff attrition; and supporting whistleblower protections and allowing scientists to do their jobs without political meddling to restore integrity to the process. And this isn't just a problem at the CDC. A survey of 1,600 EPA scientists revealed that more than half had been victims of political interference and were pressured to skew their findings, according to research released in April by the Union of Concerned Scientists.
"Federal agencies are staffed by dedicated professionals," says Andrew Rosenberg, director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists and a former fisheries biologist for NOAA. "Their job is not to serve the president but the public interest. Inspector generals are continuing to do what they're supposed to, but their findings are not being adhered to. But they need to hold agencies accountable. If an agency has not met its mission or engaged in misconduct, there needs to be real consequences."
On other fronts, last month nine vaccine makers, including Sanofi, Pfizer, and AstraZeneca, took the unprecedented stop of announcing that their COVID-19 vaccines would be thoroughly vetted before they were released. In their implicit refusal to bow to political pressure from the White House to have a vaccine available before the election, their goal was to restore public confidence in vaccine safety, and ensure that enough Americans would consent to have the shot when it was eventually approved so that we'd reach the long-sought holy grail of herd immunity.
"That's why it's really important that all of the decisions need to be made with complete transparency and not taking shortcuts," says Dr. Tom Frieden, president and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives and former director of the CDC during the H1N1, Ebola, and Zika emergencies. "A vaccine is our most important tool, and we can't break that tool by meddling in the science approval process."
In late September, Senate Democrats introduced a new bill to halt political meddling in public health initiatives by the White House. Called Science and Transparency Over Politics Act (STOP), the legislation would create an independent task force to investigate political interference in the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic. "The Trump administration is still pushing the president's political priorities rather than following the science to defeat this virus," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a press release.
To effectively bring the pandemic under control and restore public confidence, the CDC must assume the leadership role in fighting COVID-19. During previous outbreaks, the top federal infectious disease specialists like Drs. Fauci and Frieden would have daily press briefings, and these need to resume. "The CDC needs to be able to speak regularly to the American people to explain what it knows and how it knows it," says Frieden, who cautions that a vaccine won't be a magic bullet. "There is no one thing that is going to make this virus go away. We need to continue to limit indoor exposures, wear masks, and do strategic testing, isolation, and quarantine. We need a comprehensive approach, and not just a vaccine."
We must also appoint competent and trustworthy leaders, says Rosenberg of the Union of Concerned Scientists. Top posts in too many science agencies are now filled by former industry executives and lobbyists with a built-in bias, as well as people lacking relevant scientific experience, many of whom were never properly vetted because of the current administration's penchant for bypassing Congress and appointing "acting" officials. "We've got great career people who have hung in, but in so much of the federal government, they just put in 'acting' people," says Linda Birnbaum. "They need to bring in better, qualified senior leadership."
Open positions need to be filled, too. Federal science agencies have been seriously crippled by staffing attrition, and the Trump Administration instituted a hiring freeze when it first came in. Staffing levels remain at least ten percent down from previous levels, says Birnbaum and in many agencies, like the EPA, "everything has come to a screeching halt, making it difficult to get anything done."
But in the meantime, the critical first step may be at the ballot box in November. Even Scientific American, the esteemed consumer science publication, for the first time in its 175-year history felt "compelled" to endorse a presidential candidate, Joe Biden, because of the enormity of the damage they say Donald Trump has inflicted on scientists, their legal protections, and on the federal science agencies.
"If the current administration continues, the national political leadership will be emboldened and will be even more assertive of their executive prerogatives and less concerned about traditional niceties, leading to further erosion of the activities of many federal agencies," says Vanderbilt's William Schaffner. "But the reality is, if the team is losing, you change the coach. Then agencies really have to buckle down because it will take some time to restore their hard-earned reputations."
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Gene Transfer Leads to Longer Life and Healthspan
In August, a study provided the first proof-of-principle that genetic material transferred from one species to another can increase both longevity and healthspan in the recipient animal.
The naked mole rat won’t win any beauty contests, but it could possibly win in the talent category. Its superpower: fighting the aging process to live several times longer than other animals its size, in a state of youthful vigor.
It’s believed that naked mole rats experience all the normal processes of wear and tear over their lifespan, but that they’re exceptionally good at repairing the damage from oxygen free radicals and the DNA errors that accumulate over time. Even though they possess genes that make them vulnerable to cancer, they rarely develop the disease, or any other age-related disease, for that matter. Naked mole rats are known to live for over 40 years without any signs of aging, whereas mice live on average about two years and are highly prone to cancer.
Now, these remarkable animals may be able to share their superpower with other species. In August, a study provided what may be the first proof-of-principle that genetic material transferred from one species can increase both longevity and healthspan in a recipient animal.
There are several theories to explain the naked mole rat’s longevity, but the one explored in the study, published in Nature, is based on the abundance of large-molecule high-molecular mass hyaluronic acid (HMM-HA).
A small molecule version of hyaluronic acid is commonly added to skin moisturizers and cosmetics that are marketed as ways to keep skin youthful, but this version, just applied to the skin, won’t have a dramatic anti-aging effect. The naked mole rat has an abundance of the much-larger molecule, HMM-HA, in the chemical-rich solution between cells throughout its body. But does the HMM-HA actually govern the extraordinary longevity and healthspan of the naked mole rat?
To answer this question, Dr. Vera Gorbunova, a professor of biology and oncology at the University of Rochester, and her team created a mouse model containing the naked mole rat gene hyaluronic acid synthase 2, or nmrHas2. It turned out that the mice receiving this gene during their early developmental stage also expressed HMM-HA.
The researchers found that the effects of the HMM-HA molecule in the mice were marked and diverse, exceeding the expectations of the study’s co-authors. High-molecular mass hyaluronic acid was more abundant in kidneys, muscles and other organs of the Has2 mice compared to control mice.
In addition, the altered mice had a much lower incidence of cancer. Seventy percent of the control mice eventually developed cancer, compared to only 57 percent of the altered mice, even after several techniques were used to induce the disease. The biggest difference occurred in the oldest mice, where the cancer incidence for the Has2 mice and the controls was 47 percent and 83 percent, respectively.
With regard to longevity, Has2 males increased their lifespan by more than 16 percent and the females added 9 percent. “Somehow the effect is much more pronounced in male mice, and we don’t have a perfect answer as to why,” says Dr. Gorbunova. Another improvement was in the healthspan of the altered mice: the number of years they spent in a state of relative youth. There’s a frailty index for mice, which includes body weight, mobility, grip strength, vision and hearing, in addition to overall conditions such as the health of the coat and body temperature. The Has2 mice scored lower in frailty than the controls by all measures. They also performed better in tests of locomotion and coordination, and in bone density.
Gorbunova’s results show that a gene artificially transferred from one species can have a beneficial effect on another species for longevity, something that had never been demonstrated before. This finding is “quite spectacular,” said Steven Austad, a biologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who was not involved in the study.
Just as in lifespan, the effects in various organs and systems varied between the sexes, a common occurrence in longevity research, according to Austad, who authored the book Methuselah’s Zoo and specializes in the biological differences between species. “We have ten drugs that we can give to mice to make them live longer,” he says, “and all of them work better in one sex than in the other.” This suggests that more attention needs to be paid to the different effects of anti-aging strategies between the sexes, as well as gender differences in healthspan.
According to the study authors, the HMM-HA molecule delivered these benefits by reducing inflammation and senescence (cell dysfunction and death). The molecule also caused a variety of other benefits, including an upregulation of genes involved in the function of mitochondria, the powerhouses of the cells. These mechanisms are implicated in the aging process, and in human disease. In humans, virtually all noncommunicable diseases entail an acceleration of the aging process.
So, would the gene that creates HMM-HA have similar benefits for longevity in humans? “We think about these questions a lot,” Gorbunova says. “It’s been done by injections in certain patients, but it has a local effect in the treatment of organs affected by disease,” which could offer some benefits, she added.
“Mice are very short-lived and cancer-prone, and the effects are small,” says Steven Austad, a biologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “But they did live longer and stay healthy longer, which is remarkable.”
As for a gene therapy to introduce the nmrHas2 gene into humans to obtain a global result, she’s skeptical because of the complexity involved. Gorbunova notes that there are potential dangers in introducing an animal gene into humans, such as immune responses or allergic reactions.
Austad is equally cautious about a gene therapy. “What this study says is that you can take something a species does well and transfer at least some of that into a new species. It opens up the way, but you may need to transfer six or eight or ten genes into a human” to get the large effect desired. Humans are much more complex and contain many more genes than mice, and all systems in a biological organism are intricately connected. One naked mole rat gene may not make a big difference when it interacts with human genes, metabolism and physiology.
Still, Austad thinks the possibilities are tantalizing. “Mice are very short-lived and cancer-prone, and the effects are small,” he says. “But they did live longer and stay healthy longer, which is remarkable.”
As for further research, says Austad, “The first place to look is the skin” to see if the nmrHas2 gene and the HMM-HA it produces can reduce the chance of cancer. Austad added that it would be straightforward to use the gene to try to prevent cancer in skin cells in a dish to see if it prevents cancer. It would not be hard to do. “We don’t know of any downsides to hyaluronic acid in skin, because it’s already used in skin products, and you could look at this fairly quickly.”
“Aging mechanisms evolved over a long time,” says Gorbunova, “so in aging there are multiple mechanisms working together that affect each other.” All of these processes could play a part and almost certainly differ from one species to the next.
“HMM-HA molecules are large, but we’re now looking for a small-molecule drug that would slow it’s breakdown,” she says. “And we’re looking for inhibitors, now being tested in mice, that would hinder the breakdown of hyaluronic acid.” Gorbunova has found a natural, plant-based product that acts as an inhibitor and could potentially be taken as a supplement. Ultimately, though, she thinks that drug development will be the safest and most effective approach to delivering HMM-HA for anti-aging.
A new study provides key insights in what causes Alzheimer's: a breakdown in the brain’s system for clearing waste.
In recent years, researchers of Alzheimer’s have made progress in figuring out the complex factors that lead to the disease. Yet, the root cause, or causes, of Alzheimer’s are still pretty much a mystery.
In fact, many people get Alzheimer’s even though they lack the gene variant we know can play a role in the disease. This is a critical knowledge gap for research to address because the vast majority of Alzheimer’s patients don’t have this variant.
A new study provides key insights into what’s causing the disease. The research, published in Nature Communications, points to a breakdown over time in the brain’s system for clearing waste, an issue that seems to happen in some people as they get older.
Michael Glickman, a biologist at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, helped lead this research. I asked him to tell me about his approach to studying how this breakdown occurs in the brain, and how he tested a treatment that has potential to fix the problem at its earliest stages.
Dr. Michael Glickman is internationally renowned for his research on the ubiquitin-proteasome system (UPS), the brain's system for clearing the waste that is involved in diseases such as Huntington's, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's. He is the head of the Lab for Protein Characterization in the Faculty of Biology at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. In the lab, Michael and his team focus on protein recycling and the ubiquitin-proteasome system, which protects against serious diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, cystic fibrosis, and diabetes. After earning his PhD at the University of California at Berkeley in 1994, Michael joined the Technion as a Senior Lecturer in 1998 and has served as a full professor since 2009.
Dr. Michael Glickman