https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/biden-receives-endorsement-scientific-american-magazine-s-first-175-year-n1240134 Biden receives endorsement from Scientific American, magazine's first in 175-year history The magazine’s editors said they were motivated to endorse Biden after seeing how science has been ignored and politicized by President Donald Trump and his administration. Sept. 15, 2020, 11:15 AM CDT By Denise Chow
Scientific American has endorsed Joe Biden for president, the first time the venerable science magazine has backed a presidential candidate in its 175-year history. The endorsement was published in Scientific American’s October issue <https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientific-american-endorses-joe-biden/>, in which the magazine’s editors explained their reasons for publicly supporting Biden, adding that they “do not do this lightly.” They said they were motivated to endorse Biden after seeing how science has been ignored and politicized by President Donald Trump and his administration. “The evidence and the science show that Donald Trump has badly damaged the U.S. and its people — because he rejects evidence and science,” the editors wrote in the endorsement. They cited, in particular, the president’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 195,000 Americans and continues to be a public health emergency. The endorsement comes with less than 50 days to go until the U.S. presidential election and as the country juggles multiple crises in addition to the pandemic — a prolonged economic downturn, catastrophic wildfires on the West Coast and an intense Atlantic hurricane season. The editors said Trump’s failure to develop a national strategy to fight the pandemic helped accelerate the spread of the disease across the country and his misrepresentations of the facts have done even more damage. “His lies encouraged people to engage in risky behavior, spreading the virus further, and have driven wedges between Americans who take the threat seriously and those who believe Trump's falsehoods,” they wrote. But their concerns went beyond the president’s response to the pandemic and included Trump’s attempts to end the Affordable Care Act, his commitment to dismantling environmental protections and policies, and his proposed cuts in funding to agencies such as the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Biden has prioritized climate change throughout his campaign. In July, he unveiled a $2 trillion plan <https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/how-biden-s-climate-plan-makes-clean-energy-2035-very-n1234528> that experts said would put the country on an ambitious path to building a clean energy economy. The plan, which includes the goal of achieving a 100 percent clean electricity standard by 2035, earned high praise from climate scientists and environmental advocates, who said the proposal would also help repair the country’s reputation internationally. Though much of Biden’s plan would require approval from Congress, the magazine’s editors said the candidate “is acutely aware that we must heed the abundant research showing ways to recover from our present crises and successfully cope with future challenges.” They added that Trump’s many attacks on science and the scientific agencies designed to protect the country guided their decision to endorse a presidential candidate for the first time. “The 2020 election is literally a matter of life and death,” they tweeted Tuesday <https://twitter.com/sciam/status/1305854127721910275>. “We urge you to vote for health, science and Joe Biden for President.” ************************************************************************* https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/leading-medical-journal-americans-must-vote-out-current-leaders-n1242487 <https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/leading-medical-journal-americans-must-vote-out-current-leaders-n1242487> New England Journal of Medicine: 'Dangerously incompetent' politicians must go While the 35 editors who signed the editorial did not call out President Trump by name, the article is filled with allusions to his actions. Oct. 7, 2020, 5:30 PM CDT By Denise Chow The New England Journal of Medicine, one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world, on Wednesday broke with a nearly two-century tradition of avoiding politics to lambast U.S. politicians for their handling of the coronavirus pandemic. In a first for the journal, the editors called for Americans to vote out leaders who have not done enough to address the pandemic. “When it comes to the response to the largest public health crisis of our time, our current political leaders have demonstrated that they are dangerously incompetent,” the editors wrote. “We should not abet them and enable the deaths of thousands more Americans by allowing them to keep their jobs.” While the 35 editors who signed the editorial did not call out President Donald Trump by name, the article is filled with allusions to his actions. "The response of our nation’s leaders has been consistently inadequate," they wrote. "The federal government has largely abandoned disease control to the states. Governors have varied in their responses, not so much by party as by competence. But whatever their competence, governors do not have the tools that Washington controls." The editorial is the latest condemnation of the Trump administration from a respected scientific publication. Last month, Scientific American endorsed Joe Biden for president <https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/biden-receives-endorsement-scientific-american-magazine-s-first-175-year-n1240134>, the first time the venerable publication has backed a presidential candidate in its 175-year history. The New England Journal of Medicine editorial, titled “Dying in a Leadership Vacuum <https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2029812>,” does not endorse Biden, it offers an unsparing critique of Trump and his administration. The editors wrote that while Covid-19 is a global crisis, the United States government has “failed at almost every step” to contain the pathogen’s spread. “This crisis has produced a test of leadership,” they wrote.. “With no good options to combat a novel pathogen, countries were forced to make hard choices about how to respond. Here in the United States, our leaders have failed that test. They have taken a crisis and turned it into a tragedy.” The U.S. leads the world in the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases and deaths. The country has recorded over 7.3 million infections and more than 208,000 deaths, according to the World Health Organization. The editorial points to early blunders such as testing shortages and a lack of personal protective equipment for health care workers, but adds that the country continues to fall short today. “While the absolute numbers of tests have increased substantially, the more useful metric is the number of tests performed per infected person, a rate that puts us far down the international list, below such places as Kazakhstan, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia, countries that cannot boast the biomedical infrastructure or the manufacturing capacity that we have,” they wrote. The editors called other public health interventions, such as social distancing measures, “lackadaisical at best,” and criticized moves to lift restrictions before the virus’ spread was brought under control. The editorial also pointed out that mask wearing has been inconsistent across the country, “largely because our leaders have stated outright that masks are political tools rather than effective infection control measures.” The journal editors also called out several governmental agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration, that they say have been undermined by the federal government <https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/coronavirus-missteps-cdc-fda-worry-health-experts-n1238921>. The CDC, they wrote, “has been eviscerated and has suffered dramatic testing and policy failures,” and the FDA “has been shamefully politicized, appearing to respond to pressure from the administration rather than scientific evidence.”
