School vaccinations in New York in the 1940s (Library of Congress)

Whether it’s vaccines or genetically modified plants, Trump takes the troglodyte view.

Nowadays, government leaders frequently have to deal with issues involving science. In this connection, the possibility that Donald Trump could become president is particularly alarming.

Of all the developments that have advanced the human condition over the past 200 years, the discovery of vaccines to protect people against the ravages of disease has been among the most important. Within living memory, scourges including smallpox, measles, mumps, hepatitis, meningitis, bubonic plague, pneumonic plague, pneumonia, typhus, yellow fever, anthrax, flu, and polio slaughtered or crippled millions. Indeed, such outbreaks have ranked among the greatest catastrophes in human history, with the 1918 flu epidemic, for example, estimated to have killed more people than both world wars combined.


But now, as a result of the development of vaccines, people no longer live in fear of deadly disease, parents can reasonably hope to see their children live to adulthood, and the once-important greeting “How are you?” has become a mere customary salutation.

Yet Donald Trump has chosen to engage in demagoguery against the use of vaccines, spreading the lie that vaccinations cause autism. Such reckless statements endanger public health, affecting not just those who fall for them but all of us, since the more people there are within a population who are unvaccinated, the easier it is for a disease to gain a foothold, diversify, and spread.

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Trump’s rejection of modern medicine could endanger the nation in other ways as well. Many deadly diseases originate in countries whose medical capabilities are far below those of the United States. If Third World outbreaks are to be stopped before they can spread to our shores, it is essential that American medical, military, scientific, and volunteer personnel be able to go overseas and fight them. With the world linked together as it is now by rapid long-distance travel, no great wall is going to protect us from a widespread African, Asian, or South American epidemic. We need to defeat new plagues over there, so we don’t have to face them over here.

Yet Donald Trump has called for banning American Ebola fighters from returning to the United States, and presumably would act in similar fashion toward the brave souls who dare to go abroad to combat other scourges as well. As an act of betrayal of America’s finest, such cowardice speaks for itself. And from a scientific point of view, it doesn’t even meet the standard of craven self-interest.

#share#Trump’s views on agriculture are similar to those put forth by the anthroposophy movement. He and his family will only eat “organic” foods, grown locally by “biodynamic” means. Such foods are available in a number of supermarkets, but because of the low crop yields offered by such methods, they generally cost about three times as much as those produced by modern agriculture. For the Trumps, of course, paying triple the price for groceries is not an issue, and so this preference might be viewed as a harmless personal choice. Unfortunately, however, the organic-food movement has launched a variety of “truth in labeling” and other initiatives designed to increase the cost of foods grown through modern means. Having a chief executive sympathetic to such goals, with authority over regulatory agencies, could be a disaster, not only to farmers, but to millions of ordinary Americans who do have to care about their grocery bills.



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It gets worse. One of the most important frontier areas in American agricultural technology today is the use of genetic engineering to modify crop plants, making them more productive and nutritious, and decreasing the need for insecticides and chemical fertilizers. For example, by splicing the gene for producing beta carotene into rice plants, scientists have created a new breed, called “golden rice,” that is rich in Vitamin A. By growing and eating such improved rice, poor people around the world — whose diet is largely limited to cereals — can be protected against vitamin-deficiency diseases that currently bring blindness or death to millions of children every year.

The green movement — especially in European countries whose farmers fear American competition — has made opposition to such wonderful advances a central issue of their political platforms. In this, they have unfortunately had some success, getting the EU to ban imports of genetically modified foods, to the disadvantage of American agriculture and with disastrous impact on Third World countries. It is essential that whoever is elected president be a strong supporter of genetically modified organism (GMO) technology. Trump, however, is an opponent, going so far as to denounce the voters of Iowa as being victims of brain damage from the consumption of GMO corn.

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As part of the Republican costume he has recently adopted for the primaries, Trump has, over the course of the current race, mouthed the expected GOP positions on a variety of environmental issues. However, an examination of his record going back before his present incarnation does not support the hypothesis that these commitments are real. For example, while he currently says that he opposes carbon taxes, he has been a major funder of fanatical carbon-benefit deniers, such as John Kerry, who, ignoring the clear benefits offered by longer growing seasons, CO2-accelerated rates of plant growth, and rapidly advancing global living standards, have chosen to try to make fossil fuels less available to humanity.

#related#As another example of such flexibility, while Trump currently says he supports nuclear power, he has been a major funder of anti-nuclear politicians, including Senator Harry Reid (D., Nev.). It was Reid, as Senate majority leader, who blocked the establishment of a permanent nuclear-waste repository under Yucca Mountain in Nevada, thereby forcing nuclear power plants to keep storing radioactive waste on site, in or near metropolitan areas, imposing increased costs on them and risking danger to the public. Reid was also responsible for appointing anti-nuclear activist Greg Jaczko as head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), from which position he not only destroyed the Nevada nuclear-waste-repository program, but also blocked the U.S. Navy from going to the rescue of victims left shipwrecked at sea or trapped under rubble ashore by the Fukushima tidal wave in Japan.

Trump can say that he does not believe in Kerry’s and Reid’s anti-science stands on carbon-fuel use and nuclear power, respectively, but only supported them in order to obtain favors. His apologists might also claim that he doesn’t really oppose vaccinations, either, but only says he does because he sees an angle. Maybe so, but that’s hardly reassuring.


When it comes to science, truth matters.