The Folly of ‘America First’ in the Race for Biodata Amid a Pandemic
By Tamsin Shaw,
The New York Review of Books
| 05. 13. 2020
Genomic biodata is essential for epidemiology, as well as for the development of vaccines and treatments. America’s response to the coronavirus pandemic has exposed its shocking lack of preparedness for a public health emergency.
America’s response to the coronavirus pandemic has exposed a shocking lack of preparedness for public health emergencies. But it has also revealed what must be, for the aspiring strongman in the White House and his coterie, a more embarrassing fact: if America were to move in an authoritarian direction, it would be shedding international allies in order to enter into a competition with nationalistic authoritarian states that it probably can’t win.
The strengths that the US has built over the seventy-five years since World War II lie elsewhere—and they are ones that the Trump administration clearly doesn’t recognize. If the White House had chosen the standard liberal-democratic approach to a pandemic for which we were once well prepared, it would have prioritized public health goals: minimizing suffering and reducing mortality rates, and thereby also mitigating the damage to social, economic, and political institutions. That approach would have meant global cooperation, scientific collaboration, and humanitarian aid to poorer countries to help halt the spread of the virus.
But this administration did not choose that path. The president is a fan neither...
Related Articles
By Peter Aldhous, Scientific American | 07.02.2024
In June a notice posted on the website of the journal Nature set a new scientific record. It withdrew what is now the most highly cited research paper ever to be retracted.
The study, published in 2002 by Catherine Verfaillie...
By Robert F. Service, Science | 07.04.2024
Image by Ed Uthman from Flickr
Last year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved two gene therapy procedures that can treat and, in some cases essentially cure sickle cell disease, a genetic blood disorder that causes pain and...
By Oriol Güell, El País | 07.07.2024
By Sonia Suter and Naomi Cahn, PET | 07.01.2024
Image by Dusdn5959 from Wikimedia Commons
Since the US Supreme Court's 2022 decision to overturn Roe v Wade (see BioNews 1147), there have been worries about the future of IVF in the USA. Both abortion and IVF involve decisions...