Stand Up for Science: Philly Edition
It felt good.
It felt damn good to shake off some rust. To protest and stand up with my people. Scientists, doctors, researchers, teachers, healthcare workers, and people grateful for science writ large. That over a thousand people showed up on a windy and cold Friday in March in the middle of their busy, overworked days gave me some much needed hope and solidarity. I felt energized. Buoyant for a moment.
If you’re still unflinching in your belief that it’s all ok, believing in the folks aligning our foreign policy with lying, murderous dictators, taking a hatchet to the institutions that serve us, taking a machete to the real lives and careers of solid Americans, readying their axes for Medicaid and the pregnant women, children, elderly, and hospital systems who depend upon it, trusting in the ones who seem to invite another epidemic or pandemic catastrophe, who protect neither our planet nor its failing health, who disrespect and deny the truths that science and medicine can discern for all of us imperfect humans… then I lament how far you’ve fallen.
But when we fall, or get knocked down, we must get up. Even when the referee is no longer calling low blow after low blow, and the ringside judges are keeping a corrupted score, there’s no leaving the fight. We may lose it, but we will certainly lose if we believe we already have.
I didn't believe in a lost cause on Friday. I believed in the future beyond the storm. One of the speakers described how she does not believe in science. She’s right. Science is not some story to believe in, but rather a process for discovering truth, and that is what makes it our greatest hope. I stood up with passionate, hard working, courageous, and committed kindred spirits who either want to make the world a better place, or want to keep discovering and sharing in its infinite, majestic, scientific beauty. Usually it’s both motivations.
Here’s a good clip of an infectious disease specialist speaking:
And here are a four photo galleries of some posters, with some urgent messages in the bottle, unscrolled:
I walked home holding on to a fragile sense of community and common purpose that for the moment felt like engineered Kevlar. They say in desperate times of democratic collapse, citizens should keep records and document what’s going on. Democracy is a conversation, and it dies in silence. So here is a summary of what I was standing up to protest on March 7th, 2025:
Workforce Reductions and Operational Disruption
Significant cuts have affected major health institutions: approximately 1,300 employees (10%) from the CDC and 1,500 from the NIH so far. Implementation has been abrupt, with employees given minimal notice. The targeting of probationary employees risks losing our bright and young future science leaders, not to mention irreplaceable institutional knowledge.
FDA and Patient Safety Concerns
The FDA has experienced dramatic personnel losses in key regulatory positions, including the resignation of the Food Division head over what he called indiscriminate termination of food safety personnel. Concerns exist about regulatory continuity for medical devices and emerging technologies.
Research Funding Impacts
Funding caps and cuts at the NIH may disproportionately affect institutions without substantial endowments, potentially concentrating research in wealthy institutions and widening healthcare disparities across regions. This is in addition to ongoing clinical trials and research that has been unplugged and strangled.
Emergency Response Capabilities
Reductions in emergency response personnel at FEMA and specialized scientists at the CDC will weaken epidemic preparedness and disaster response. Similar cuts at NOAA, including at tsunami warning centers, will impact critical monitoring and alert systems for all sorts of weather related events.
Policy Direction Concerns
The appointment of leadership figures who have previously questioned medical consensus raises concerns about evidence-based approaches to health policy, to say the least. HHS Secretary Kennedy's proposal to eliminate many public comment requirements contradicts earlier promises of transparency, not to mention his halting of vaccination meetings and research, affecting items from next season’s flu shots to new and potentially improved Covid vaccines. Measles.
Environmental Protection Rollbacks
The administration has indicated plans to cut the EPA budget by 65%, threatening programs that protect air, water, and land quality. Former EPA heads warn that Americans will miss the agency "when it's gone," noting its role in reducing air pollutants while in fact supporting sustainable economic growth. Pollution and climate change absolutely harm our health.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
You know what the opposites of these terms are? Conformity, inequity, exclusion. We can naively convince ourselves that a meritocracy blooms from nature, just like truth is spread through social media algorithms. A good garden needs tending. Minorities of all kinds should be respected and fairly included regardless of race, gender, orientation, or whatever categories we try to define. But until recently it has been fiercely American to exclude Nazis and the people who salute them.
Healthcare Program Administration
Potential disruptions to essential healthcare programs including the ACA, CHIP, Medicare, and Medicaid will have immediate consequences for millions of Americans who depend on these services, as well as the financial solvency of many hospitals and health systems near you. Millions of uninsured patients showing up at ERs could break the system, and already painful costs for everyone will increase significantly.
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I would have stood up for any one of these problems. And there are so many more.
We cannot forget the tens of thousands of human beings who have now been treated like gameshow contestants and humiliated by sadists, including one who tried to trademark the line: You’re fired ©. The humiliations and economic damages sustained over the past several weeks ripple outward into the lives of millions of Americans. Moms, dads, daughters, sons.
This coordinated series of blows to almost every part of our scientific body makes it feel unstoppable. And yet we must not throw in the towel. Our patients need us. Our imperiled future on this planet needs scientists to keep working, educating, engaging, standing up.
Muhammad Ali was a legendary fighter and a kind of warrior poet. Knocked down, stripped of his heavyweight title, he regained it twice. And one of those times was seemingly impossible against George Foreman. Like us Ali was not perfect in his life. But he did also land some right hooks for the ages with these quotes:
Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Challenge the notion of impossibility and strive for the seemingly unattainable.
If they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, they can sure make something out of you. Humorous. But there is unknown potential within each of us, and we must believe in our own abilities.
Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth. Give back, make a positive impact. Stand up.
This little kid still remembers.
I was there with you. And I appreciate your documentation and your plea. I’ve shared your newsletter with a friend who voted R, and I hope she has read all the way through to the comments. I hope she sees the light and starts to march with us, because we’re trying to save her life and her democracy, too.
Thank you, Ryan.