Medicine, Not Politics: A Warning

Medicine should not be political. It doesn’t sound like a complicated statement. But it comes with a related one; medical issues should not be second to political ones. If medical evidence is contrary to political belief, political belief should know when to step down.

If only that were so. However, there’s been a recent influx of political belief that has aimed to shut down medical evidence. And while I am loath to discuss politics and think that whatever politics I or my clients share or do not share is not relevant to my work, this is something that I cannot ignore, and anyone in medicine cannot ignore.

WHO withdrawl

For what can only be described as political reasons, the US has withdrawn from the WHO. This could be disastrous for world health. The United States is one of the biggest voluntary contributors to the WHO and it contributes a great deal to worldwide health data. And the WHO contributes right back, providing its assistance to the Ebola cases in the US. There are 72 WHO centers in the US; what will happen to them is unknown. The future of the WHO pandemic agreement, in discussion since 2021 and intending to provide a global response to future pandemics, is unknown now the US is no longer contributing. Since WHO data formed a crucial part to the COVID-19 response worldwide, there could be untold consequences in the near future.

CDC data

That’s just the beginning. The Center for Disease Control (CDC), just as important as the WHO in health, has been gutted. Some data sets and pages devoted to provider treatment options have vanished off the site. Researchers report that they cannot publish research in journals without approval. The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) has missed two issues, for the first time in almost sixty years. With the specter of bird flu lurking on the horizon, this is a very bad sign.

NIH funding cut

It’s not just the CDC, either. The National Institute of Health (NIH) is equally muzzled. Meetings are canceled, hiring and travel are frozen, and even routine communications are banned. Indirect costs covered by grants have been slashed to almost nothing. Indirect costs may seem unneeded to the untrained eye, unless you know that it includes such vital elements as renting buildings and equipment, the utility payments for those buildings, and paying support staff. Most universities lose money on research and rely on these payments to keep up that work.

Anti-vaccine Secretary of Health and Human Services

The appointment of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services is just as alarming, although it may not seem so. He is anti-vaccine as well as embracing many conspiracy theories. I cannot sum up all of this any better than oncologist David Gorski on the Science-Based Medicine blog, who has been tracking his anti-vaccine activity since 2005. Read that post for an introduction to Kennedy’s frightening beliefs.

There’s more. Proposals to cut Medicaid into basically nothing, leaving the disabled out in the cold. Medications treating HIV are not going to other countries that need them. Fluoride removed from drinking water. Removals of protections for special needs students. I could go on for quite some time, but this post has depressed me such a degree that I’ve been working on it for two weeks despite its relative brevity.

Fortunately, there are those who are fighting back. All of the CDC data from before the January 28 data wipe is available on the Internet Archive. The American Cancer Society, along with many other health and medical organizations, has called for the data to be restored. Doctors and nurses (and other healthcare workers) are rallying in person and on social media for the restoration of services they need.

All of this should horrify everyone in healthcare. Regardless of how you feel politically. The fact it doesn’t is a sad commentary on US politics. But I’ll be doing my best to fight back for medicine, not politics. Will you?