Medicine, science, politics and money

By Jim Thompson
HCP columnist

Medicine, science and politics today are experiencing suffering reputations. It is kind of funny.  

Read the surveys done on the reputation of Congress and one finds, in general, Congress is viewed as honest as a used car salesperson except when it comes to the responder’s own congressperson, who they find to be just fine. Obviously, taken as a whole, something is wrong with this statement. All responders’ congresspersons can’t be great; otherwise, all responders would say Congress, overall, has a fine reputation.  

The same is true in medicine and science. Almost identical responses to the politician response outlined above. I can verify – my daughter, a senior researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado – is great, but I will be the first to tell you the climate change crowd is out to lunch. I suspect many other parents in the same position may feel the same way.

There is a common thread through medicine, science and politics. It is money, especially government money or government mandates that cause private entities to spend money.

Take medicine. The COVID-19 vaccine was a mandate in many cases. It was paid for by government or private funds. People spent millions if not billions on masks. The government doled out funds to businesses that were forced to close. The money side of the pandemic was just as notable as the medicine side.

The United States has the highest health costs in the world. There are many causes of our high health costs with government rules and regulations being a big portion of the costs.

Science, especially climate science, would be laughable if the wasted money was not so serious. The date of the supposed point of no return keeps slipping. The “science” attached to this “problem” becomes more and more tenuous. The whole game is to invent more crises requiring more money.

And then there is politics – the grandaddy of all federal largess for wasted projects.

Hopefully, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy can cut through the red tape and bring government spending under control. Cut off the head of the monster – money handouts – and just perhaps medicine and science can recover their reputations. 

Politics? I doubt even Elon and Vivek can restore their reputation.

Take NASA. At one time, it was a pure science endeavor. Then, it learned how to feed off the government dole. Now Elon Musk’s own SpaceX runs circles around it, even though SpaceX is private.

We are going to see a lot of weeping, wailing and hyperventilating in the coming months. At least, I hope so. And I hope in the process, we can restore the reputations of these important fields.

Jim Thompson, formerly of Marshall, is a graduate of Hillsboro High School and the University of Cincinnati. He resides in Duluth, Ga. and is a columnist for The Highland County Press.