American Chemical Society President Marinda Li Wu, Ph.D., said the budget impasse is effectively choking America's science innovation pipeline, strangling new discoveries, future economic growth and job creation.
Because if the government is not doing ... what, exactly ... for two weeks, science screeches to a halt, despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of chemical science is done in the private sector
They are correct that the president does not regard science as essential, and that since he has decided over 90% of government funding agencies are irrelevant compared to White House calligraphers, the National Science Foundation (NSF) will issue no new grants or cooperative agreements for innovative scientific research, and no continuing grant increments for existing projects will be provided, effectively suspending or completely halting critical research efforts - but what research group in US academia actually spent all of their money September 30th? None.
Political shows are still happening. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it had to recall 30 furloughed workers (it still has 6,000 coming to work) to deal with a minor outbreak of salmonella that was traced to a poultry producer in California and has sickened hundreds of people in 18 states - out of 48 million foodborne illnesses that occur each year, notes Hank Campbell at Science 2.0, and salmonella only happens if people don't cook their chicken.
The National Institutes of Health has closed its cancer clinics, interrupting the treatment of hundreds of cancer patients and reports indicate that many of the Department of Energy national laboratories will be closing, beginning as early as Oct. 13, if Congress and the president cannot agree to a continuing resolution or a budget - The House passed a resolution to keep funding the National labs but the Democratic-controlled Senate shot it down. The president used an executive order to bypass his own party in the Senate and fund death benefits for military personnel, which somehow were not exempt along with the rest of the military.
The ACS claims that without two weeks of bureaucrats managing science, we will be cripped in such diverse fields as:
- Improving the energy efficiency of combustion engines;
- Developing the next generation of biofuels;
- Understanding emerging, dangerous pathogens that could put our citizens at risk;
- Engineering rescue robots for national security situations to protect our servicemen and women;
- Improving cybersecurity at all levels, from private to institutional systems;
- Designing new lithium-ion batteries for the next generation of vehicles;
- Advancing sensor technology to detect nuclear, chemical and biological threats;
- Developing technology and protocols to safely dismantle chemical weapons;
- Creating new methods to improve medical imaging to detect cancers as soon as possible; and many other areas of research.
In other words, the ACS is helping to sell the administration's message and the minute the budget is resolved, they will be back to declaring that science is a slow, marathon process, while implying we would have had new batteries in the next few weeks if the House would just agree on Obamacare.
"These closures may well be necessary given the current federal impasse, but to shut down a critical part of our nation's research and innovation pipeline puts our nation at a severe competitive disadvantage globally," said Wu. "Science cannot fuel our innovation economy without sustained, predictable funding, this we know. A government shutdown that closes the world's largest research system can lead to unintended negative consequences putting at peril America's economic growth and long-term stability.
"As president of the American Chemical Society, with a membership of more than 163,000 chemists and engineers — many of whom are supported by federal funding or work at national research facilities — I urge our elected officials to come to terms swiftly and provide the solid economic security we all need."