Science what will happen in 2017

Too late because even as the scientific and international communities have begun to take the threat of pandemics more seriously, global health experts—including Bill Gates, World Health Organization director Dr.

Tom Frieden, to name just a few—warn that nowhere near enough is being done to prepare, leaving the U. So broken that it recently prompted Gates and his wife Melinda to put their weight behind a major public-private initiative called the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations CEPI.

Since President Donald Trump took office, key government positions remain unfilled, including a new director for the CDC. Although a bipartisan congressional spending deal reached on April 30 blocked many of those cuts, the signals Trump has sent are worrying.

The consequences of a major pandemic would be world-changing. The flu pandemic killed 50 million to million people—at the top end, more than the combined total casualties of World Wars I and II—and for a slew of reasons, humans are arguably more vulnerable today than they were years ago.

First of all, there are simply more of us. The number of people on the planet has doubled in the past 50 years, which means more humans to get infected and to infect others, especially in densely populated cities. Because people no longer stay in one place—nearly 4 billion trips were taken by air last year—neither do diseases.

An infection in all but the most remote corner of the world can make its way to a major city in a day or less.

For a limited time, TIME is giving all readers special access to subscriber-only stories. For complete access, we encourage you to become a subscriber. Click here. In the case of a new pandemic, modern medicine should provide some protection.

There are troubling economic implications as well. One saving grace is that the scientific understanding of that risk is better than ever. Research groups are working feverishly to predict the next pandemic before it even happens. But microbes evolve about 40 million times as fast as humans do, and we are losing ground.

Under Stalin, the Soviet government supported the science of Lysenko, a pseudoscientist who rejected basic principles in biology, because his theories supported the principles of Marxism. This gave rise to Lysenkoism , a term used to reference the manipulation of the scientific process to achieve ideological goals.

This term seems more and more relevant today. Our elections decide our science. In , President Bush imposed a ban on government funding for research on embryonic stem cells — halting the potential development of cure to scores of illnesses.

Funding was mostly allocated to research projects not related to stem cells or the environment. Priorities change elections. At the same time, NIH funding still fell short of what was requested from Congress during the course of his administration. Today, the impact of elections on scientific research is palpable.

Since his election, President Trump wasted no time before he began to launch attacks on clean air and water, on climate science, and on basic medical research. A recent hearing on the scientific method and climate change devolved into an embarrassing public exercise in bickering and name-calling.

In an intense exchange with climatologist Michael Mann, the Chairman of House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, no less, claimed that Science magazine was not an objective source. In a thriving democracy, society forms politics, politics controls science, and science informs both society and politics.

In the s, scientists formed the Association for American Scientific Workers AAScW with the goal of inviting scientists to take moral stands and involve them directly in political and social issues. At the time, they resolutely stood against fascism and were instrumental in improving the quality of science reporting. No predictions are perfect, but at the very least, we can put boundaries on what is likely. Geoghagen argues that it would be best to channel efforts into approaches that would do the most good.

Mazet agrees, and says that the Global Virome Project plans to look for viruses precisely at such fault lines. They want to, for example, search blood and meat samples of bushmeat, or the urine or saliva of rodents that share human homes. The project, they say, would be better off focusing on people—the workers in the bushmeat trade rather than the meat itself, for example. The fight for science in Latin America is passing through! For Liquitaya, the fight is personal. In January , the National Council of Science and Technology Conacyt , the government agency in charge of implementing scientific and technological policies, reduced the amount of money offered to graduate students like him.

As the coordinator of a graduate programme in energy and the environment, she sees that the youngest scientists are the most affected. We need a change. Others were worried about scientific collaborations between Mexico and the United States. The monarch represents cooperation between our two countries, she said, but that connection may now be in jeopardy. But still, he sees some hope. Hundreds of scientists across Boston started their morning by rallying on campuses including Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston University, before heading downtown towards the main science march on Boston Common.

The rally at Harvard Medical School began with event organizers and speakers leading marchers in a protest song, accompanied by an accordion. But many in the crowd only hesitantly chimed in.

The researchers and medical staff from Harvard and the surrounding research hospitals were clearly unaccustomed to belting out protest songs. Although rain drenched the crowd at the start of the march in Washington DC, the weather didn't dampen the spirits of the enthusiastic attendees. Politicians tend to jump to conclusions in an effort to give answers to their voters, he says, even if the science is still in question.

Siblings Eli and Gwenden Dueker came to the march dressed as the Wonder Twins — characters from the animated s TV show Super Friends — sporting purple jumpsuits and yellow capes.

Eli, an environmental microbiologist at Bard College in Annandale-On-Hudson, New York, says he feels a duty to engage with the public and policies. Science is crucial for understanding and protecting the planet, said local television meteorologist Mike Nelson.

He spoke over the chants of anti-fracking activists; Hickenlooper supports the practice of fracking. It was her first time marching for any cause, and she carried a handmade sign decorated with viruses, bacteria and other microorganisms she had studied in her classes.

She spoke about the importance of government funding for the sciences while staffing a table for the Colorado Scientific Society, headquartered in Lakewood, of which she is president. When do we want it?