Why I Marched for Science

This is the speech I made at the April 22, 2017, March for Science in Doylestown, PA.

My name is John Mack and I live in Newtown.

On Twitter I am known as PharmaGuy – that’s P-H-A-R-M-A, plus “Guy!” I PUBLISH a newsletter for the pharmaceutical industry. And I have a graduate degree in Biochemistry.

Every day we benefit from medicines and vaccines created by scientists who work in pharmaceutical and government-funded research laboratories.

We need to discover new drugs faster and defend efforts that make those drugs cheaper and more accessible to everyone.

In doing so, however, we also need to defend the scientific methods the drug industry uses to prove that medicines WORK.

A big part of that process is the Food and Drug Administration, which ensures that drugs are proven safe and effective through rigorous clinical trials.

Today the Food and Drug Administration and other science-based agencies like the National Institutes of Health and the Environmental Protection Agency are under attack by the current administration,

WHICH intends to increase SPENDING on the military and decrease SPENDING on these and other science-based agencies that help improve our lives.

We should not have to sacrifice science for security.

DEFUNDING science impacts us on a local level whether the issue is the quality of our air and water, fracking, opioid drug abuse, or the heroin epidemic.

We need leaders who believe in data and scientific evidence to help solve these problems.

More scientists must get involved in politics today just as Benjamin Franklin did during the American Revolutionary War.

There is a war being fought today – a war against science.

We must defend science in THIS war.

Marching together is a good first step.

But we must follow up by electing pro-science leaders and ensure that they rely on evidence, not beliefs, when making decisions about our health, our environment, and our general well-being.

Thank you for listening and may the Science be with you!

Posted on 20 Jul 2017, 5:56 - Category: Science