Germany takes action to stem measles outbreak. Anti-vaxxers to blame–again.

Measles is on the rise in Europe, driven by "vaccine gaps" which in turn are due to misinformation about the benefits of vaccines. Vaccines are possibly the single greatest contribution to human health in the past century. Literally millions of people are alive today who would not be, thanks to vaccines.

And yet: vaccine rates have dropped in recent years in multiple countries. In March, the BBC reported that measles had become endemic (meaning that it is self-sustaining, continuing to spread within the country) in France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Romania, Switzerland and Ukraine. The worst measles outbreak is in Romania, which reported over 3,400 cases and 17 deaths in just the first 3 months of this year.

Now measles is spreading in Germany, which is scrambling to contain it. Germany had 504 cases through mid-April, versus just 33 cases for the same period last year. At least one person, a young mother of three children, has died. The primary reason for the spread of the disease, as reported by the German news outlet RT, is unvaccinated individuals, and the reason their numbers are growing is simple: the anti-vaccine movement.

In the U.S., the anti-vaccine movement caused the worst measles outbreak in 20 years in 2015. The outbreak in Germany appears even worse, despite the fact that parents can be fined as much as €2500 ($2800) for failing to vaccinate their children. In a remarkable effort to try to get this outbreak under control, the German parliament has decided to require kindergartens to report parents who don't vaccinate their kids. Let's hope this works.

Vaccination is safe and remarkably effective, but the anti-vax movement is furiously trying to convince parents not to vaccinate. Their latest gambit is "Vaxxed," a conspiracy-mongering anti-vaccine screen produced by Andrew Wakefield, the notorious ex-doctor who published a fraudulent (and later retracted) study claiming that MMR vaccines caused autism. Nearly 20 years later, despite Wakefield losing his medical license because of his "elaborate fraud," he continues to push his debunked claims.

Fortunately, many people are now pushing back. Just last week, noted New Zealand physician Dr. Lance O'Sullivan jumped up on stage at a screening of "Vaxxed" to warn people in the audience that they were being defrauded. O'Sullivan was named New Zealander of the Year in 2014 for his efforts to bring health care to disadvantaged people in rural areas. I will close with his words from a Radio New Zealand story describing the dangers of vaccine refusal:
"We are trying to save a child's life, we put it on a helicopter, it flies to Starship Hospital. The kidneys are failing, its heart's failing, its lungs are failing. All because we didn't put a bloody $7.50 meningococcal vaccine into that child's thigh."

Trump to appoint non-scientist as chief scientist of USDA

Scientists work here now, but Trump's new overseer
will probably make them all want to flee.
This is how corruption starts.

Donald Trump's expected appointment for under-secretary for research at the USDA will be a right-wing talk radio host with no scientific credentials, according to a new report from ProPublica. The expected appointee, Sam Clovis, worked as a political aide to Trump on his transition team, and was installed at the USDA in a temporary role soon after Trump took office, to be Trump's "eyes and ears" until a permanent USDA director was approved.

Clovis has no scientific background or credentials. As ProPublica explained, he was a talk radio host in Iowa who ran unsuccessfully for the Senate in 2014. He majored in political science in college and studied business administration in graduate school, and has never published a scientific paper.

Now Trump is appointing Clovis to be Under Secretary for Research, Education, and Economics (REE) at the Department of Agriculture. This administrator is responsible for a large portfolio of research, both internal and external, conducted by and supported by the USDA, including NIFA, the National Institute for Food and Agriculture.

I've had several research grants supported by USDA's NIFA, through which my colleagues and I sequenced the genomes of many agriculturally important animals and plants. I've also collaborated with internal USDA scientists who work for the Agricultural Research Service, another branch of the USDA that will soon report to Sam Clovis. I've met many outstanding scientists, both inside and outside the USDA, through these projects.

Overseeing the USDA's research programs requires strong expertise in biological science. A non-scientist has no basis for deciding which research is going well, or what questions need further study, or which questions present the most promising avenues for research. A non-scientist is simply incompetent to choose among them–and I mean this in the literal sense of the word; i.e., not having the knowledge or training to do the job. (This does not mean that I think Sam Clovis is incompetent at other things; I don't know him and he might be very capable in other areas.) Among other problems, an non-scientist leader of a scientific agency will be incapable of using scientific expertise to set priorities, and instead can make up his own priorities. In the case of Sam Clovis, his history leads me to believe that his priorities will be based on his conservative political agenda.

The previous under secretary, Catherine Woteki, has a Ph.D. in human nutrition and was previously the dean of the school of agriculture at Iowa State University. The current Acting Under Secretary, Ann Bartuska, has a Ph.D. in ecology and has worked in many scientific positions, including high-level positions at the U.S. Forest Service and the Nature Conservancy.

Both Dr. Woteki and Dr. Bartuska could run circles around Sam Clovis on any of the scientific issues under the purview of the USDA's Under Secretary for Research. Nonetheless, Clovis will soon oversee thousands of scientists currently working at the USDA, despite the fact that he has no idea what they do. It is still possible that Trump will appoint someone else, or that the Senate will decline to confirm Clovis, but these possibilities seem unlikely.

When leaders are incompetent, they appoint people under them who are also incompetent. Trump's intention to appoint Sam Clovis as the chief scientist of the USDA isn't the first demonstration of his incompetence, and I don't expect it to be the last. What's most dangerous about this appointment (and others like it) is that incompetence enables and even encourages corruption, because the appointees don't understand or respect the mission of their own agencies. Instead, they follow their own agendas, whatever those might be.

The 2008 Farm Bill stipulated (section 7511) that the Under Secretary for REE must be chosen from
"distinguished scientists with specialized or significant experience in agricultural research, education, and economics."
Sam Clovis is not such a person, but Donald Trump just doesn't seem to care.