In summary 2016 was this meme:
I will now segway into the horror that has befallen the US. Specifically, the man who can not keep off Twitter at the moment; President Donald Trump. A historic upsurge in world wide protest erupted in January and this is one of my favorite posters from the women's march in Washington DC.
The land of the NIH and swarming with female scientists, Washington was awash with demands that science matters. With a president that seems to take science as a silly suggestion rather than a friend of progress, there is a very real concern that Donald will reverse decades of good work. His attitude is portrayed in many of his strange actions. The appointment of Steve Bannon as lead strategist went ahead even though he has published articles like “1001 Reasons Why Global Warming Is So Totally Over in 2016" even though it was the hottest year on record. The Environmental Protection Agency transition team was headed by Myron Ebell, a global warming denialist saying:
The current head of the EPA is Scott Pruitt; another denialist that is in fact involved in a 28 state wide lawsuit against the agency he is leading. This is not the only area of science that Trump's small hands are stretching towards.
In 1998, Andrew Wakefield published a case series in the Lancet, which suggested that the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine may predispose to development of autism in children (for an indepth review of this click here). Despite the small sample size of 12 children the paper received notarity, and MMR vaccination rates began to drop. In 2011 He was found guilty of fraud by picking and choosing data that went into the final publication and for ethical violations. He was later found to have received financial support from lawyers fighting autism cases. In my opinion, this man should have been arrested, but instead gets a documentary. Vaxxed-from cover up to catastrophe is, I'm sure, a labour of love from Andrew Wakefield that I will never pay to see. In a study involving 95000 children, no link to autism has been found; but clearly no one told Trump (A. Jain et al. J. Am. Med. Assoc. 313, 1534–1540; 2015). The entire basis of the vaccine/Autism agenda is based on this fake study-or rather the alternative facts represented.
Trump has hired Robert F. Kennedy Jr, another denialist to head up the Vaccine Safety commission. He said this:
I would retort with this :
It is scary that in an age with all the information, the leader of the free world gets his news and his policy from conspiracy theorists. He views science as a footnote in what makes America great, and remains adamant that in order to "make America great again" one must ignore the people who have worked on scientific breakthroughs and instead turn a profit. SAD!
There are gloomy days ahead. However, science birthed the light bulb and I refuse to believe that it won't continue to illuminate the world.
