Dear Congressman,





Continued bickering between parties in congress is not making you look any better as the days go on. This shutdown has got to end! This prolonged gap in government funding is taking a larger and larger toll on scientists as well as the public. It seems that everything can be politicized these days, which makes this a sad day indeed. Everyday that you do not do your job, it becomes harder for science to advance. Science is a field that grows exponentially. For example: One experiment today will yield results that then lead to three more questions (or three more experiments). Each one of those experiments yield results that answer the original question, but then three new questions pop up (9 new experiments). This is how science advances. Now picture the government shutdown starts the same day as the first experiment, bringing it to a halt. Every experiment that builds off of the original one is no longer conducted. All data from that first experiment can no longer contribute to other scientists’ research. And that’s exactly what is happening today. I could have just sequenced a genome that no one in the world ever has before, but I can’t upload it to Genbank right now, because it doesn’t have staff to maintain the site and every single scientist that needs that genomic information to do their own experiments and answer their ow n questions, can’t even start. My days are now plagued with visions of the red band at the top of all the government-funded resource websites with some version of, “due to the lapse in government funding, the information on this web site may not be up to date, transactions submitted via the web site may not be processed, and the agency may not be able to respond to inquiries until appropriations are enacted.” It’s time to start talking to each other as adult human beings. Stop the name calling, the blame games, and the passive-aggressive news articles. You are seriously wasting my time. It’s unbecoming, congressman, and that’s the last thing you want your constituents to think about you.





Sincerely,