In an unprecedented move, the oldest and perhaps most prestigious professional journal in the world has weighed in on a presidential election, asking readers to vote out current leaders who have “failed the test” of leadership.
In an editorial published Thursday, the editors of The New England Journal of Medicine made a fact-filled plea to voters in the United States, urging them to elect a president who puts his trust in science and scientists.
“Our leaders have stated outright that masks are political tools rather than effective infection control measures. The government has appropriately invested heavily in vaccine development, but its rhetoric has politicized the development process and led to growing public distrust,” the editorial reads.
The editors point to the fact that the United States came into the pandemic with every advantage—manufacturing capacity, a top-notch biomedical research system and scientific expertise that is considered the best in the world. Time and again, scientists and doctors have turned this expertise into new therapies and preventative measures for the betterment of public health. And yet, the editors say, experts were not and are still not being given the platform they deserve during a global pandemic that has already killed more Americans than any conflict since World War II.
“Our current leaders have undercut trust in science and in government, causing damage that will certainly outlast them. Instead of relying on expertise, the administration has turned to uninformed ‘opinion leaders’ and charlatans who obscure the truth and facilitate the promulgation of outright lies,” the editors write.
Rather than aggressively handling the pandemic from the White House, NEJM editors say current leaders (they do not name the Trump Administration directly) dumped the disease on underprepared state governors, who do not wield the power nor tools of Washington.
For example, the potential for the CDC to play a valiant role during the pandemic was high; instead, the federal health agency has been reduced to feuding with current leadership in very public forums. The same has happened with the FDA—in an August tweet, Trump accused members of the “deep state” at the FDA of working to slow testing of COVID-19 vaccines until after the November presidential election. Officials from the FDA as well as other scientists and members of the public have been vocal in their concern that Trump would try to approve a vaccine before all appropriate steps were completed. In response, the CEOs of nine of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world came together to sign a pledge to “uphold the integrity of the scientific process.” The CEOs of AstraZeneca, BioNTech, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, Novavax, Merck, Pfizer and Sanofi signed the commitment in September to “help ensure public confidence in the rigorous scientific and regulatory process.”
The editorial also takes aim at how poorly the United States has handled the pandemic compared with other nations. The editorial notes that the U.S. death rate is more than double that of China, exceeds by 50 that of Japan, a country with a vulnerable elderly population, and even dwarfs the rates in lower-middle-income countries, such as Vietnam, by a factor of almost 2,000. The editors attribute this to ineffective testing, the lack of basic PPE, lackadaisical social distancing rules, too early loosening of restrictions and the undermining of mask mandates.
The editorial is rare for two reasons: 1) it takes a political stance and 2) it is signed by all of the editors of the journal. Since it first began published in 1812, the New England Journal of Medicine has only published four editorials collectively signed: one in 2014 about contraception; one about standard-of-care research; an obituary that same year for a former editor-in-chief; and one in 2019 about abortion.
"The reason we've never published an editorial about elections is we're not a political journal and I don't think that we want to be a political journal, but the issue here is around fact, not around opinion. There have been many mistakes made that were not only foolish but reckless and I think we want people to realize that there are truths here, not just opinions," journal Editor-in-Chief Eric Rubin told CNN.
Rubin, M.D., Ph.D., is an Associate Physician specializing in infectious disease at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and is a Professor in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Rubin and his fellow editors conclude the editorial with this statement:
“Truth is neither liberal nor conservative. 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. We should not abet them and enable the deaths of thousands more Americans by allowing them to keep their jobs.”