When Science Becomes A Battleground

Hot Topic Bold Talk | Public Health Science

 

There are moments when a society has to decide what it is willing to trust.

Not whom it is willing to worship.

Not which political party it prefers.

Not which television commentator speaks most persuasively.

The question is far more fundamental:

What evidence are we willing to examine?

What happens when evidence contradicts what powerful people want us to believe?

What happens when scientists discover something inconvenient?

What happens when government agencies responsible for protecting public health become places where scientific findings and political priorities collide?

And perhaps the most important question of all:

What happens to ordinary human beings when we get these decisions wrong?

That is where I want to begin Podcast 194.

I have spent considerable time looking at a collection of stories about health, science, medicine, vaccines, privacy, government, cancer, rural health care and extraordinary medical discoveries.

At first, they appear to be separate stories.

They are not.

Together, they tell us something about the extraordinary power of science — and about the consequences that can follow when evidence is ignored, restricted, politicized or mistrusted.

This is also not a story in which every government decision is wrong or every scientist is right.

Science does not work that way.

Scientists disagree.

Studies can be flawed.

Medical recommendations change when better evidence becomes available.

Treatments fail.

Hypotheses collapse.

Researchers sometimes discover that something they believed for years was incorrect.

That is not a weakness of science.

That is science working.

A scientist must be willing to say:

Here is what the evidence shows today.

Here is what we still do not know.

Here is what we need to investigate next.

Political systems operate differently. Political leaders have constituencies, philosophies, agendas and promises. Science has another obligation: follow the evidence wherever it leads.

Trouble begins when those two systems become confused.

Episode Summary Points:

  • Dr. Jackalyn Rainosek examines what happens when Public Health Science collides with executive political power and ideological agendas.
  • A critical look at the resurgence of measles in America and the real-world impact of shifting federal vaccine guidelines.
  • How delayed infant hepatitis B immunization policies create measurable risks for newborn health and hospital systems.
  • The institutional danger of suppressing peer-reviewed CDC and FDA research when findings run counter to political narratives.

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Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

When Science Becomes A Battleground

Public Health, Political Power, And The Scientists Still Searching For Cures

I want to talk to you about when science becomes a battleground. When public health, political power, and scientists are still trying to research curves for us, they lead into a conflict because the political power has decided to minimize science. Think about that for a moment. Science has allowed us to solve all kinds of cures for diseases. I had the privilege of living twenty minutes from the Houston Medical Center, where so many discoveries have been made. I know scientists there. I know them well. They practice science no matter what and how they vote. They practice science, not politics.

There are moments when our society has decided what is willing to trust or not and it bothers me. I’m not concerned about how people worship, or what their political parties are. I’m not going to name one television commentator who speaks more persuasively than another. The question is far more fundamental for me. What evidence are we willing to examine? What happens when this evidence contradicts what powerful people want us to believe?

What happens when scientists discover something inconvenient? What happens when government agencies responsible for protecting public health become places where scientific findings and political priorities collide? Perhaps the most important question of all is, what happens to ornate people like you and me when we get these decisions wrong? This is what I’m going to talk to you about in episode 194. I’ve spent considerable time looking at collections of stories about health, science, medicine, vaccines, privacy, government, cancer, rural health care, and extraordinary medical discoveries.

I’ve done that. I’ve done it for many years because I treat people with serious illnesses. These stories that I’ve looked at that are more current They appear to be a separate story, and they are not. Together they tell us something about the extraordinary power of science and about the consequences that can follow when evidence is ignored, restricted, politicized, and mistrusted. This is also a story in which every government decision doesn’t have to be wrong, and every scientist doesn’t have to be right. Science does not work that way anyway.

Scientists disagree. They debate things. Studies can be flawed. They name it. Medical recommendations change when better evidence becomes available. Treatment fails. Some of their hypotheses collapse, but researchers discover something they believed for years may be true, and it may not be, based on the new scientific studies they’re doing. This is not a weakness of science. That is science working. A scientist must be willing to say, “Here’s what the evidence is today. Here’s what we still do not know. Here’s what we need to investigate further.”

 

Hot Topic Bold Talk | Public Health Science

 

The Cost of Politicizing Public Health

Political systems operate differently. Political leaders have constituents, philosophies, agendas, and promises. Science has another obligation. Follow the evidence wherever it leads. Trouble begins when these two systems become confused. When public health becomes personal, let’s talk about that. We can talk about vaccination rates as percentages. We can talk about epidemiology. We can talk about herd immunity. We can talk about advising committees and government regulations but when a child dies, suddenly the statistic has a face.

One of the articles I have used for this episode is from the Atlantic. It told a story of a mother in Pennsylvania who contracted measles during pregnancy and later lost her newborn child. The circumstances of the baby’s death became the subject of public dispute. Pennsylvania officials described it as associated with the state’s measles outbreak, while the coroner identified it as a ruptured spleen as the immediate cause.

Federal Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy publicly questioned the connection. He would, since even though he vocalizes he supports vaccines. He is anti-vaccine. You see the appointees he’s put in his department, and they are very clearly against the scientific process. That distinguishes and deserves to be reported accurately. Medical causation should not be turned into a political slogan. America is experiencing a serious resurgence of measles. By July 2026, the United States had recorded more than 2,300 measles cases. The largest number in 35 years.

Measles had been declared eliminated from continuous domestic transmission in the United States in 2000. Multiple outbreaks have now placed that achievement at risk. Think about that. A disease this nation had successfully driven from continuous domestic circulation has returned with substantive numbers. That did not happen because some scientists forgot how measles works or the vaccine. The vaccine still exists that would prevent measles.

Medical knowledge still exists. The public health infrastructure still exists. Something else has changed. Trust has changed. Vaccination behavior has changed. The information environment has changed. Amphetical vaccine policy has changed. This is where Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., leadership of the Department of Health and Human Services becomes relevant.

 

Public health isn’t about political slogans. When policy ignores empirical evidence, preventable diseases return and real lives pay the price.

 

Kennedy has repeated that he is not anti-vaccine and that he wants Americans to have better information and get confidence in public health institutions that deserve to be reported and so does the report of decisions made under his leadership. The important question for us is not whether we like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The most important question is, what does the evidence tell us about the consequences of his policies? We have a resurgence of measles, and people are dying from it.

Modeling the Real Consequences of Policy Shifts

Now, let’s look at hepatitis B decisions. For decades, American health officials recommended that newborn babies receive their first hepatitis B vaccination shortly after birth. There is a practical reason for that policy. Hepatitis B can become a lifelong infection and infants who contract the virus face an especially high probability of developing chronic infection, which can eventually produce serious liver disease and liver cancer.

The United States adopted universal newborn vaccinations in 1991. The results were extraordinary. Childhood hepatitis B infections declined by approximately 99%. That federal policy changed our lives. Vaccine advisors appointed by Kennedy recommend delaying the first hepatitis B vaccination for babies whose mothers tested negative for the virus, rather than routinely administering it shortly after birth. Research subsequently modeled the likely consequences.

Studies published in JAMA, the pediatrics, concluded that delaying vaccination could result in additional childhood infections and additional health care costs. One modeled scenario estimated that hundreds of additional infections will occur. That is where science becomes essential. We do not have to speculate about its intention. They examine the consequences which happen with diseases. Supporters of the residency policy have argued that newborns considered at low risk do not necessarily require immediate vaccination.

Medical organizations opposing the change point to a different reality. Prenatal screening is imperfect. People can unknowingly carry hepatitis B. Household transmissions can occur, and the first dose can reduce the likelihood that children who complete the vaccine series will not have the consequences. These questions have to be tested when something like this comes out from the HS department.

Truly, the function of public health systems should be to ask questions, collect the evidence, publish the evidence, allow other scientists to examine their evidence, and then make recommendations that can withstand scrutiny. Let’s see what happens, supposedly studies or these comments from Kennedy’s group are not scrutinized by those scientists that have the knowledge base about hepatitis B. Now, let’s go on and look at what happens when the research itself becomes the story.

This may be one of the most troubling questions raised by the articles I reviewed. In April 2026, the Washington Post reported that a CDC study examining COVID-19 vaccinations had passed the agency’s scientific review process and was expected to appear in the CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. According to the post, the study found that the vaccination reduced emergency department visits and hospitalizations among healthy adults by approximately half during the previous winter.

Scrutiny Must Replace Suppression in Federal Agencies

It was not published by the CDC. HHS disputed the suggestion that politics determine the outcome and said the methodology had some concerns of theirs. That distinction does matter. Another development occurred, though. Research originally blocked at the CDC because of Kennedy and his team was later published in a leading medical journal that raised an important institutional question. Who should decide which scientific findings the public gets to see? This question becomes even larger when we consider another report from the New York Times.

FDA scientists had conducted studies examining the safety of COVID-19 vaccinations and shingles vaccinations. According to the reporting report, it cited in congressional correspondence that two COVID-19 studies had already been accepted by the scientific journals following peer review when FDA officials directed scientists to withdraw them. The studies reportedly found no new safety signals in the population examined and concluded that serious adverse events were rare.

Federal officials questioned whether the conclusions were adequately supported by the data. Again, that agreement itself was not inherently improper. Scientists do challenge conclusions constantly. The crucial issue is what happened next. Do we allow the research to enter the scientific debate? Do we publish the methodology? Do independent scientists examine the data? Do researchers attempt to replicate these studies or does disagreement inside government decide whether scientific work ever reaches the scientific community or even reaches us?

 

Science advances through scrutiny, not silence. Blocking peer-reviewed research damages institutional credibility and misleads the public.

 

Those are very different questions. I can tell you one thing. Science advances through scrutiny, not through silence. I’m very clear that the reason that those studies didn’t want them published is because they refute what they’ve been saying while they’ve been in office. The vaccine question is an issue of trust more than anything else. Something deeper is happening here. Americans increasingly distrust institutions. Some distrust pharmacological companies, governments, physicians, universities, journalists, and scientists themselves.

There are legitimate historical reasons to scrutinize every one of these institutions. Pharmacological companies have made serious mistakes. Government agencies have made serious mistakes. Medical institutions have made serious mistakes. Scientific consensus has changed. That history should teach us to demand transparency and that every scientific study is given the opportunity to be reviewed and see if it can be replicated and what the reality is.

Scientific consensus can change but nothing replaces transparency. It should teach us that evidence does matter. There’s an enormous difference between a skeptic and someone who rejects anything. Healthy skepticism says, “Show me the evidence. How was the study conducted? Who funded it? How large was the sample? Was it peer-reviewed? Has anyone replicated the findings? What are the limitations?”

Ideological reaction says, “I already know what I believe. Show me only the evidence that agrees with what I believe.” That is dangerous, whether it comes from the political left, the political right, a corporation, an activist organization, a government official, or a scientist. The standards must remain the same Evidence first. Let’s consider what was found.

Navigating the Reality of Modern Health Privacy Gaps

One medical information article is something about what is coming in the future. This is another story that initially appeared unrelated. It isn’t. Professor Jennifer D. Oliva of Indiana University has written about the changing landscapes of American medical privacy. Most Americans believe that the HIPAA protects virtually all of their medical information. It does not. HIPAA governs healthcare providers, insurances, and their business associates. Vast qualities of health-related information can exist outside those protections such as your fitness tracker, your DNA information, your internet searches, your period tracking application, and other digital health information.

At the same time, the federal government has explored access to a large collection of medical records for vaccine research. Large medical databases can provide extraordinary benefits. Imagine researchers being able to identify a rare adverse reaction among millions of people. Imagine discovering that a drug already being used for one disease unexpectedly reduces the risk of another. Imagine finding patterns in cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, autoimmune disorders that researchers could never see in a small clinical study because it is given to the scientific community. That is the promise. Privacy is a danger.

It is important that people not penetrate the shield people have about their privacy but sophisticated data sets can sometimes be combined in ways that make individuals identifiable, and so they have no business being in the public arena or in a government’s hands. Once again, we encounter the same question. How do we obtain the benefits of science while protecting the dignity and rights of human beings? The answer can simply be, trust us.

The government should have to explain what information it seeks. Simply “trust us” is not the answer. What purpose are they going to use the information for? How long will it be retained? Who can access it? What safeguards exist? What happens when those safeguards fail? Scientific progress and human rights should not be enemies. We should demand for both. When political powers reach the FDA, then we have problems. Consider another decision.

In May 2026, the FDA authorized the first fruit-flavored electronic cigarette for adults. That decision followed years in which the agency had rejected numerous fruit candy and dessert-flavored vaping products in part of concerns about their appeal to younger people. The Washington Post reported that President Trump had passed FDA Commissioner Marty Makary to move on with flavored vaping products.

The FDA said its scientific research found that the authorized products combined with age restriction technology and marketing requirements could provide benefits to adult smokers while reducing youth access. Public health organizations raised concerns about. Later information reportedly indicated that the fruit-flavored products were not significantly more effective than tobacco-flavored electronic cigarettes in helping smokers quit. That is another example when we need to have scientific scrutiny.

What evidence supports the decision they made? What evidence challenges it? What influence did political officials have? What protections exist for children? What happens to youth vaping rates? What happens to adult cigarette smoking rates? Will the FDA change its policy if future evidence points in another direction? That is how public policy should always interact with science. I want to go to the scientists who refuse to give up. They are the people that I highly respect.

I want to show something else. I want to change the emotional direction of this episode. I don’t want to leave you believing that this is a simple story of institutions in conflict. It is not something magnificent happening at the same time. Scientists are discovering. Researchers are still experimenting. Patients are still volunteering for client trials. Physicians are still asking questions. Discoveries that once appeared impossible are becoming possible. Consider pancreatic cancer.

Cracking the Code on Undruggable Cancer Targets

I’ve had several patients over the years that have had pancreatic cancer. The diagnosis usually led to six months for them to live. For decades, scientists knew that a protein called KRAS played an enormous role in driving many cancers. They also face a problem. They could not figure out how to attack it effectively. Scientists call KRAS undruggable. Think about that word, undruggable. It sounds fatal. It sounds final. It sounds defeated. Scientists kept going. Researchers studied its structure. Scientists and chemists searched for openings. Teams investigated ways molecules might attach to it.

Year after year, failure after failure, then they discovered something. What had once appeared to be an impermeable target contained vulnerabilities. Scientists developed new ways of attacking KRAS. One experimental drug, daraxonrasib has produced encouraging results in patients with advanced pancreatic cancer. Early clinical findings reported in 2026 showed patients receiving the experimental treatment after an early therapy lived a median of approximately thirteen months, luckily twice as long as the historical expectation with a standard approach with pancreatic cancer.

It’s not a cure. Scientists involved in research say that clearly. That may be one of the beautiful things about real science. It does not pretend to know or not know about something. Science is saying, “We have not cured this disease.” In the next sentence, we have moved the boundary completely. For some living with pancreatic cancer, six additional months are not simply six squares on a calendar. They can mean attending a birthday, a child’s graduation, Christmas, a wedding anniversary, another vacation, another conversation, or another morning beside someone you truly loved.

Scientific progress is measured in statistics. Human beings experience it in time. That story got to me because I have worked with many people that have serious illnesses. There’s another one that was amazing. The results are not what we would like, but they certainly showed something. It’s the woman who sees light again. This is an extraordinary story, which involves Lucy Ackman, the daughter of the billionaire investor Bill Ackman.

At 26, she suffered a catastrophic brain hemorrhage that left her unable to move, speak, or see. Her positions eventually attempted something that had never previously been performed in the human eye. They removed the mitochondria, the tiny structures inside cells that help produce energy, from muscle in your leg and transmitted them into your eyes. The FDA granted emergency authorization for the scientific procedure. For a period after, she reportedly gained some ability to perceive light. The improvement did not last. Her medical team is continuing its work.

 

Failure today doesn’t mean failure forever. Forty years of attacking the ‘undruggable’ KRAS protein shows why research funding requires patience.

 

We should be extremely careful here. This is not an established treatment. It has not been demonstrated to restore sight. The report describing her treatment had not undergone peer review at the time the story was published. Yet look at what this story represents. A medical team encountered an injury for which conventional medicine offered little hope. Researchers have recently observed encouraging results involving optic nerve injuries in animals. They asked, “Could this work in a human being?” They sought regulatory permission. They attempted it. They measured what happened, and now other scientists can examine the results.

This is the pathway from impossible to experimental to occasionally establishing medicine. Every medical treatment we now consider a routine once existed somewhere along the pathway I have just described. Science needs something. Politics often does not and that is patience. Scientific breakthroughs rarely arrive in dramatic ways that we remember them. We remember the discovery. We forget the twenty years preceding it that led to that discovery. We remember the successful medicine. We forget the compounds that failed. We remember the scientist who receives an award.

We forget the graduate students, laboratory technicians, nurses, statisticians, research subjects, and families who contributed pieces of knowledge along the way. The pancreatic cancer story illustrates this beautifully. Researchers began to identify KRAS as a cancer driver in the early 1980s. More than four decades later, researchers are finally developing increasingly effective ways of targeting it. Imagine what would have happened if someone had said after five years, “Nothing useful has happened. Stop funding it,” or after ten years, “This protein is impossible to target. Move on,” or after twenty years, “Taxpayers have waited long enough. We would never know what discoveries had been abandoned.”

This is one reason for the debate over federal funding of research studies. The Washington Post reported that the number of competitive NIH-supported projects declined significantly during the financial year of 2025. The same report described the termination of numerous scientific advisory committees and departures from federal scientific agencies. People can legitimately debate the size of the government.

They can debate federal spending. They can debate regulation. They can debate how research grants should be awarded. There is also a serious argument that researchers spend far too much time navigating federal administration’s requirements rather than conducting research. That concern appeared in another article among the materials for this episode. These ideas do not need to contradict one another. We can demand efficient government and protect scientific research. We can eliminate unnecessary paperwork and preserve rigorous oversight.

We can reform institutions and protect their independence. The choice does not have to be government bureaucracy or scientific abandonment. Here’s the question to consider. How do we build institutions that allow excellent science to flourish? I know something and all of you should know it. It’s been written about the United States is losing scientists and graduate students to other countries because of the way they are being treated here. Health is something that is extremely important to have access to, no matter who you are in this country.

Bridging the Gap Between Innovation and Healthcare Access

Scientific discoveries mean very little to someone who cannot reach a doctor. That is another theme running through these stories. Rural America faces enormous health care challenges. Technology can help. Telemedicine can connect patients to specialists hundreds of miles away. Remote monitoring can identify problems before someone reaches an emergency room. Artificial intelligence may help clinicians analyze information, yet technology cannot replace a functioning health care system.

A rural community needs physicians. They need nurses, pharmacists, hospitals, emergency services, mental health professionals, transportation, reliable internet access, and people who can afford the treatment. The same principle can apply globally. The World Health Organization estimates that annual cancer diagnosis worldwide could increase from approximately 20.6 million cases in 2024 to 35 million by 2050. The burden will not fall equally. Low-income nations with fewer screening programs and less access to treatment are expected to suffer disproportionately.

Demanding Institutional Transparency as Engaged Citizens

When we talk about curing cancer, another question belongs beside it. Who will receive that cure? Discovery without access creates another form of inequality. What can we do? I do not want to end Hot Topic Bold Topic simply by describing the problems, but you need to know the problems so you can stand up and talk about them and demand that science be respected. I want us to ask what responsible citizens can do, though.

First, protect the independence of scientific research. That does not mean scientists should be beyond criticism or beyond feedback. It’s quite the opposite. Independent science depends upon critiquing them. Research should be challenged. Methods should be examined. Data should be questioned. Results should be replicated. Political leaders should not determine scientific truth. They are not trained in science. Scientists should not determine political values. Each institution has a responsibility and limits.

Second, demand transparency from public health agencies. When the CDC changes a recommendation, show us the evidence. Demand the evidence. When the FDA authorizes their products, show us the evidence. When a study is rejected, explain the scientific reasons. When government officials disagree with agency scientists, make the disagreement visible whenever they can. Whenever confidentiality and law permits it. There are seldom times that it can’t be put forth in the public world and somewhere or another, so we’ll all know.

Third, learn the difference between uncertainty and ignorance. Science often talks about probabilities that can frustrate people. Someone asks, “Is this science safe?” A scientist may answer, “Here’s what millions of doses tell us about known risks and benefits.” Someone asks, “Will this cancer drug save me?” A physician may answer, “Here’s what happens in clinical trials.” Those answers may feel less comforting than absolute certainty. They are truthful, and that’s what’s important.

Fourth, protect medical privacy. Ask where your health information goes. Read the privacy laws on health applications. Understand that HIPAA does not cover every piece of health-related data you generate. Demand stronger protection as technology makes identification easier. Fifth, support the long work of discovery. A cure may begin with a laboratory experiment that appears to have no immediate application.

 

Our duty isn’t to tell science what answers we want. Our job is to give inquiry the freedom to discover what’s true and have the courage to listen.

 

A cancer treatment may begin with someone studying the shape of a protein. A treatment for blindness may begin with an experiment involving mitochondria. We cannot know in advance which investigation will transform medicine. That is precisely what makes scientific research so important. The question is much bigger than Trump or Kennedy. I began this show thinking about the Trump administration and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. I ended up thinking about something much larger.

Presidents leave offices. Cabinet secretaries leave office. Political parties gain power and lose it. Scientific knowledge continues to accumulate across generations. The scientist working in a laboratory may never meet the person whose life, her discovery, eventually saved her. The patient entering an experimental trial may never live to see the treatment perfected. The researcher studying a molecule may spend twenty years failing before someone else discovers what the failures were teaching us. That is what is an extraordinary human enterprise.

It requires something from all of us such as humility, curiosity, patience, and courage, and the willingness to change our minds when evidence tells us we were wrong. We should scrutinize the Trump administration. We should scrutinize Robert F. Kennedy Jr. We should scrutinize Democratic and Republican administrations, pharmaceutical companies, universities, medical journals and scientists. The standard cannot change according to who holds political power. The standard must be based on evidence.

Imagine two Americas. In one, scientific findings become another weapon of partisan warfare. People select medical facts according to political identity. Government officials suppress inconvenient information. Citizens lose trust. Researchers leave. Preventable diseases returned. Extraordinary discoveries become hard to pursue but let’s look at the other America. We argue vigorously while protecting the process that allows evidence to emerge.

We ask questions, demand transparency, correct mistakes, protect patients, protect privacy, and we fund discovery. We challenge scientists without attacking science. When researchers spend 40 years trying to penetrate an unruggable cancer target, we understand something profound that has been discovered. Failure now does not mean we will have failure forever. That may be the message I most want us to remember from episode 194. Science is not a collection of answers. Science is a humanality, discipline, refusal to stop asking questions.

Somewhere today, a researcher is looking through a microscope. Somewhere a patient has volunteered for a clinical trial. Somewhere a physician sees something medicine has never seen before. Somewhere someone is testing an idea everyone else thinks will fail. Somewhere hidden inside what we do not yet understand may be the treatment that saves someone they love. Our responsibility is not to tell science what answers we want. Our responsibility is to give honest inquiry, the freedom to discover what is true, then we must have the courage to listen. Thank you for tuning in to this episode.

 

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