By Seth Borenstein | Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Researchers, doctors, their patients and supporters ventured out of labs, hospitals and offices Friday to stand up to what they call a blitz on life-saving science by the Trump administration.
In the nation’s capital, a couple thousand gathered at the Stand Up for Science rally. Organizers said similar rallies were planned in more than 30 U.S. cities.
Politicians, scientists, musicians, doctors and their patients were expected to make the case that firings, budget and grant cuts in health, climate, science and other research government agencies in the Trump administration’s first 47 days in office are endangering not just the future but the present.
“Science is under attack in the United States,” said rally co-organizer Colette Delawalla, a doctoral student in clinical psychology. “We’re not just going to stand here and take it.”
“American scientific progress and forward movement is a public good and public good is coming to a screeching halt right now,” Delawalla said.
Health and science advances are happening faster than ever, said former National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins, who helped map the human genome. The funding cuts put at risk progress on Alzheimer’s Disease, diabetes and cancer, he said.
“It’s a very bad time with all the promise and momentum,” said Collins.
“I’m very worried about my country right now,” Collins said before breaking out into an original song on his guitar.
Emily Whitehead, the first patient to get a certain new type of treatment for a rare cancer, told the crowd that at age 5 she was sent hospice to die, but CAR T-cell therapy “taught my immune system to beat cancer” and she’s been disease free for nearly 13 years.
“I stand up for science because science saved my life,” Whitehead said.
Friday’s rally in Washington was at the Lincoln Memorial, in the shadow of a statue of the president who created the National Academy of Sciences in 1863. Some of the expected speakers study giant colliding galaxies, the tiny genetic blueprint of life inside humans and the warming atmosphere.
“We’re looking at the most aggressively anti-science government the United States has ever had,” astronomer Phil Plait told the booing crowd that carried signs that were decidedly nerdy and attacking President Donald Trump, Elon Musk and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Signs included “Edit Elon out of USA’s DNA,” “In evidence we trust,” “science is the vaccine for ignorance” and “ticked off epidemiologist.”
Nobel Prize winning biologist Victor Ambros, Bill Nye The Science Guy, former NASA chief Bill Nelson and a host of other politicians, and patients — some with rare diseases — were scheduled to take the stage to talk about their work and the importance of scientific research.
From 7 million miles away from Earth, NASA proved science could divert potentially planet-killing asteroids, Nelson said. On his space shuttle flight nearly 40 years ago, he looked down to Earth and had a “sense of awe that you want to be a better steward of what we’ve been given,” he said.
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The rallies were organized mostly by graduate students and early career scientists. Dozens of other protests were also planned around the world, including more than 30 in France, Delawalla said.
“The cuts in science funding affects the world,” she said.
Protesters gathered around City Hall in Philadelphia, home to prestigious, internationally-recognized health care institutions and where 1 in 6 doctors in the U.S. has received medical training.
“As a doctor, I’m standing up for all of my transgender, nonbinary patients who are also being targeted,” said Cedric Bien-Gund, an infectious disease doctor at the University of Pennsylvania. “There’s been a lot of fear and silencing, both among our patients and among all our staff. And it’s really disheartening to see.”
Isabella O’Malley contributed from Philadelphia.
