The U.S. is in the middle of a government shutdown - and if it doesn’t end soon it
will be the longest in history.
But to be clear this is a “partial” shutdown which means that 75% of the government was
approved for funding in the new year and the rest got caught up in the demands from President
Donald Trump to build a wall on the southern border for over 5 billion dollars.
Since the shutdown began at the end of December 2018, it has affected thousands of scientists
and made lasting impacts on the scientific community.
Even for a partial shutdown we’re looking at 9 government departments affected with
nearly four hundred thousand federal employees furloughed, meaning they’ve been put on
leave without pay.
Only those deemed “essential” are left to be part of the skeleton workforce that
operate the facilities, also without pay.
And scientific communities are taking a toll.
The agencies affected include NASA, NOAA, the National Science Foundation, the , and
the National Parks Service, just to name a few.
These are some of the biggest funders of grants and projects across the country.
Without government money coming to fund the research, thousands of scientists are now
out of pay, out of work, and losing valuable information from their labs.And the impact
is being felt outside government grounds as well.
Even if you’re not a federal employee, but your research is funded by one of the federal
science powerhouses, your progress is still affected.
And some experiments can’t just be put on pause.
Ongoing research, like the state of our ecosystem is constantly collected and analyzed.
Science magazine reported about an entomologist at Michigan State University who’s endangered
bumble bees are just sitting in a fridge in his lab waiting to be shipped to the USDA
laboratories.
But they’re closed.
He explains that this delay could cost him a whole a whole year of progress.
At SFSU, William Chadwick, works as a research technician in cellular molecular biology,
analyzing and manipulating yeast cells; specifically their waste removal organelle called the vacuole.
Humans have organelles in their cells called lysosomes that have the same function of the
vacuole.
So, by looking at mutated yeast strands, Chadwick can find correlations back to humans, even
sometimes helping progress research with disease.
“So essentially what happens in the example that I always give called Batten disease.
It's an infantile disease that usually kills the children.
There are too many lysosomes because they can't break things down and so their body
can't break down things it needs to [..] we found a way to recover that gene that creates
Batten's disease.
It's called BTM1…
So if we can fix that disease that occurs in yeast is the idea that we can use that
same gene to create a gene therapy for people suffering from Batten disease.
“ BUT his lab can’t get their contacts from
the National Science Foundation to help them proceed to next steps, so they’ll be pushed
6 months behind.
What does a 6 month delay mean? “and if labs can't access research or access
funding, then it just prevents or pushes back the development of a cure.
So if a child who would have had a cure in six months doesn't for another five years
and passes between those two points[..], that's just kind of the easiest way to think of how
it affects people and funding of research and science and society in general.”
And just because you’re not a scientist or don’t have a disease doesn’t mean you’re
off the hook either.
Researchers collect a lot of critical data that the average person doesn’t think about
and, we use it to power our everyday lives, like weather forecasts for example.
During the shutdown, national weather forecasts are going to be worse because there aren’t
enough people to maintain and repair malfunctioning programs.
It may seem trivial, but winter is primetime for updates to hurricane models and they use
this time to train emergency managers for the next storm season.
But that’s at a halt.
The government shutdown is also having a ripple effect on an international level.
At the beginning of January, NASA completed a flyby to the most distant object we’ve
ever visited in history, and yet, they couldn’t share their accomplishment with fellow peers.
It’s estimated that one thousand federal employees couldn’t attend the American Astronomical
Society or American Meteorological Society conferences to share and exchange knowledge
from the year.
Some scientists say the U.S. absence is not only a missed chance to learn, but also a
possible turning point for the U.S. to fall behind in scientific research.
The list goes on and on about the countless impacts this partial government shutdown has
caused.
And every day it progresses, the impacts reach more people and they get worse.
With no end in sight, we can only hope that it’ll be over quickly and we can bounce
back better than before.
What do you think about all of this?
Tell us down below and if you’ve ever wondered how scientists can work together even when
they’re countries don’t, watch this video here.
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