Take It From a Scientist. Facts Matter, and They Don’t Care How You Feel.
22 September 2024
This essay, excerpted below, is from Dr. Francis Collins, former Director of the National Institutes of Health from 2009 to 2021. Dr. Collins was a “gene hunter” at the University of Michigan, helping identify genes for cystic fibrosis, Huntington’s disease, neurofibromatosis and multiple endocrine neoplasia type 1, among others. He also led the Human Genome Project. He is currently researching progeria, a disease of premature aging.
I am amazed by the medical progress that has been possible in the past few decades, both in alleviating suffering and saving lives. But I am also deeply troubled by the growing distrust of science in our society, just at the time when its insights are most needed. No recent experience highlights that disconnect more starkly than the last five years of the Covid pandemic. From my vantage point on the front lines of that battle against a dangerous virus, let me highlight both the triumphs and tragedies, and propose some actions that we can all take to re-anchor our troubled society to truth, science, faith and trust — and put us back on an individual and collective journey that might be called the road to wisdom.
Go with me back to early 2020, as the worst pandemic in more than a century was spreading across the globe, and deaths in the United States were in the thousands every day. For me and hundreds of scientists who joined together during Operation Warp Speed, the most hopeful strategy was to develop a vaccine. We all worked to be sure the large-scale trials were scrupulously conducted, and that they involved a wide range of men and women of different racial and ethnic backgrounds.
What would success look like? The Food and Drug Administration had set the threshold for approval of this effort at 50 percent efficacy, about what the flu vaccine achieves most years. My colleague Tony Fauci and I frequently discussed our hopes for the outcome. Maybe it could be possible to reach 70 percent? I confess that I was fearful of failure. I also prayed a lot.
The results were revealed in late November 2020. For both the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna mRNA vaccines, there was 90 to 95 percent efficacy in preventing illness that caused respiratory symptoms and close to 100 percent efficacy in preventing severe disease and death. Side effects were minimal in the tens of thousands of volunteers who had taken part in each trial. It was a moment of profound relief, of gratitude toward all who had made this possible, of answered prayer. As I tried to speak to the dedicated team about the significance of what had just happened, I could not find words that could fully express the emotions of the moment. I was unable to hold back the tears.
Future historians will judge the development of safe and effective mRNA vaccines for Covid in 11 months as one of the greatest medical achievements in human history. We felt that at last we were on a path to conquering this disease and stopping the terrible death toll. And to a major extent, that came true: Current estimates by the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit foundation supporting research on health care, are that more than three million lives were saved in the United States between December 2020 and November 2022 by Covid vaccines. If you were vaccinated, you might be one of them. I might be also.
Yet ultimately more than 50 million adult Americans declined vaccination — even after the shots were made widely available at no cost. Though medicine and public health make poor bedfellows with politics, one’s political party was a strong predictor of resistance. So was religion, with white evangelical Christians (my own group) the most resistant of all. Public distrust, driven by social media, cable news and even some politicians, reflected a host of concerns: whether Covid-19 was real, whether it was really all that serious, whether the vaccines were rushed, whether there were common and serious side effects that had been hidden, whether the mRNA would alter the recipient’s DNA, and whether companies had skirted the rules about safety. More outlandish conspiracies also circulated on social media: that the vaccines contained microchips or cells from recently aborted fetuses, for example. People of faith were particularly hard hit by misinformation.
. . .
The statistic that gives me the deepest heartache is this: More than 230,000 Americans died unnecessarily between June 2021 and March 2022, largely because misinformation caused them to turn away from what might have saved them in the midst of a dangerous pandemic, according to an assessment from the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation. This death rate is the equivalent of four fully loaded 737s crashing every day. Complete essay
I believe there is evil in the world, which includes those who repeatedly lie or are indifferent to the truth. Unfortunately, evil is seductive and regularly attracts more people. What can we do about it? For myself, I try to avoid evil. Otherwise, exposing myself to evil makes me more susceptible to it, like an infection. At first, I may recognize the lies, but after hearing them repeated over and over again, many of us become comfortable with these lies and may even start to believe them. When Trump, Vance or leading Republican officials speak, I turn down the volume, change the station or turn away - I don’t want my mind damaged by people who have made lying a major part of their lives, even if they sometimes tell the truth. Similarly, I avoid Fox and other sources of misinformation and do what I can to reduce their influence in the world.
To me, the most dangerous sources of lies today are those who claim:
Trump won the 2020 election
COVID is a myth
Vaccines are dangerous
Climate change is a myth
We cannot avoid talking to friends, family, neighbors or business associates who may spout these lies, but we can try to gently change the subject if it comes up (“let’s just agree to disagree”).
Life is short. I would rather listen to the geniuses like Dr. Collins than the plagues of the world like Trump and Tucker Carlson. Realistically, we will not do both. Which do you choose?
My related essays:
Stay away from evil, particularly regarding money, 30 August 2024
Stay away from evil, part 2, 28 March 2024
Putin, Trump and Murdoch - the world's great evils, 27 September 2023
Stay away from evil, Part 1, 12 June 2023
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