Review the health policy you identified and reflect on the background and development of this health policy. Post a description of the health policy you selected and a brief background for the problem or issue being addressed. Explain whether you believe there is an evidence base to support the proposed policy and explain why. Be specific and provide examples.

Review the health policy you identified and reflect on the background and development of this health policy. Post a description of the health policy you selected and a brief background for the problem or issue being addressed. Explain whether you believe there is an evidence base to support the proposed policy and explain why. Be specific and provide examples.

Even now, on the heels of the March for Science, we see some scientists hesitate to acknowledge the fact that science is political. Why wouldn’t they? We hold it up as the golden standard of objectivity, and synonymize it with words like ‘unbiased’ and ‘rational’, divorcing it from our human capriciousness. It’s quite natural to associate those notions with science. After all, you’d be hard pressed to find a more objective way of discovering the true nature of nature than by utilizing the power of the scientific method. But there’s an important distinction to be made between science and the scientific method.Politics And Medical Science Intersect Essay

We use the scientific method to minimize bias and maximize objectivity. That is what’s rational and unbiased. The scientific enterprise, however, is not, and it’s nothing short of clinging to a fanciful myth to suggest that it ever was.

The reality is that engaging in scientific research is a social activity and an inherently political one. Imagine for a moment that you were going to start a new country today. There are things you’d be compelled to do by default; coming up with laws, for example. Funding science is not a default position when creating a country, it’s a decision we made once as a society, and continue to revisit as we make new policies and pass budgets. Science has been linked to the politics of society since the first person thought it was a good idea to do research, and then convinced their neighbors to give them money to do it.Scientific research doesn’t take place in a vacuum, it can only happen with society’s blessing. In this way science is a political institution de facto, governed by society and beholden to its political will.Politics And Medical Science Intersect Essay

Society controls who

But it’s not just the decision of whether or not to do science that’s political, society has also historically wielded the power to select who is permitted to become a scientist. We see, now, the sexist and racist obstructions that have allowed science to be dominated by white males. To many African Americans growing up in a prejudiced society, the path to becoming a scientist is among the paths of most resistance. In the case of women scientists, they could only work as “volunteer” faculty, leaving accolades for their male counterparts to collect. Extraordinary scientists like Esther Lederberg, who discovered the lambda bacteriophage, or Lise Meitner, who literally split the atom, were written out of the textbooks as they watched their male collaborators accept Nobel prizes without them. Such is also the story of Rosalind Franklin, a personal hero of mine, who changed the entire field of biology and was instrumental in discovering the double-helical structure of DNA that we know today.Politics And Medical Science Intersect Essay

So, let’s keep in mind society’s ability to control who can become a scientist today. Moving towards Muslim bans and mass deportations not only weakens the talent we can import, but also robs many immigrants of the opportunity to fulfill their potential, and becoming the great contributors to society that they would have otherwise been. These actions threaten America’s leading position in research worldwide.

Society controls how

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There’s also the matter of society’s control over how science is conducted. Scientists, the normal humans that they are, are just as susceptible to being swept up by the cultural currents of their society as anyone else. There was a time when naturalists and anthropologists found that their ‘science’ justified the subjugation of what were considered inferior races. It wasn’t too long ago that the CIA funded mind control studies, subjecting unknowing patients to hallucinogenic drugs and harmful chemicals.Politics And Medical Science Intersect Essay

Lest we forget, the US Public Health Service also conducted the Tuskegee syphilis experiment which denied black men treatment for the disease in order to study its effects, despite its availability. The true nature of the experiment was kept secret from the subjects, and the public at large, and it spanned four decades. Studies like this were allowed to take place until society, through the vehicle of politics, decided to make a change (institutional review boards, etc.). These changes are ethical and moral ones, which place the well-being and safety of the individual over the need to answer a scientific question, and they should always take place with conversations that include scientists and lawmakers.

Keep this point in mind today, when you see trends of muting federally-employed researchers and preventing them from communicating their research to each other and to the pu