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consequences for So- viet productivity, especially in agricultural science. Now American biomedical scientists have become targets. A 2021 survey found that 15% of scientists who engage with the news media about COVID-19 have re- ceived death threats. Another in 2022 found that al- most 40% of COVID-19 scientists report experiencing at least one confrontation either online or in person, including death threats. I've been singled out regularly by political extrem- ists and Fox News anchors. Such statements reverber- ate and result in online threats or actual stalking. How can America preserve its hard-earned domi- nance in science, especially given the volume of recent attacks on biomedicine? First, we must protect biomedical scientists. So far there have been few public statements of support from any branch of the U.S. government, and our university leaders and scientific societies are mostly silent. There are no organizations on which biomedical scientists can depend for legal help if
they are targets of public smear campaigns. This silence could well shape the plans of young people now choosing careers, as they see how scientists are treated in America. The U.S. must also recognize how anti-science rhetoric has emerged as a new lethal force and find mechanisms to halt its advance. Pseudoscience carved a path of destruction in the U.S.S.R. almost 100 years ago, and now it is happening again. Beyond the 200,000 deaths that have already occurred, as activism against COVID vaccines morphs into panic about all immunizations, we could see the return of catastroph- ic childhood infections such as measles or polio. The fact that polio genomes have been detected recently in the wastewaters of New York and London is an omi- nous warning. Over the last two decades we made steady progress in vaccinating the world's children, with impressive declines in pediatric deaths. But those gains are fragile. We must find ways to preserve our achievements in biomedicine and support
scientists, even if that means both the scientists and those in positions of power engage political leaders and challenge ideo- logues to reject their anti-science rhetoric and agenda. Otherwise, almost a century of America's preemi- nence in science will soon decline, our democratic val- ues will erode, and our global stature will fall. PETER HOTEZ is a professor and dean at Baylor College of Medicine and co-director of the Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development. He is the author, most recently, of "The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science: A Scientist's Warning." FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2023
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