by Ed Yong published in The Atlantic
Read original on The Atlantic's website
The COVID-19 global pandemic has brought an unprec...Show description
Posted 1376 days ago
One of the points that most stood out to me in this article was that Yong called for a breakdown between the traditional, objective and scientific view of medicine and the sociologic impacts it has on our society. He says:
COVID-19 could be the catalyst that fully reunifies the social and biological sides of medicine, bridging disciplines that have been separated for too long.
To backup this argument, he notes that major publications like the New England Journal of Medicine and Nature published scientific pieces that also called for direct political action. As our understanding of disease and medicine grows more and more profound, so does it's influence on society. We can no longer look at medicine as this completely objective, scientific pursuit, because as we can see today, shortfalls or decisions we make based upon our current knowledge can influence an infinite amount of other parts of society.
Another point is that there has been an unprecendented amount of investment in COVID research in the past few months. This money does not always go to the right organizations or people, because there are certainly opportunits that may take advantage of it. Yong does not imply this is anywhere near the majority (certainly it is the vast minority), but it's still important to note that much of this investment is political in nature, not scientific. All of a sudden, there is a massive interest in this domain because of the effects it has on our society, not because of some basic scientific principles. He quotes some scientists saying that before the pandemic, they struggled to get any funding for coronavirus research at all.