Dr. Jonathan Samet, former dean of the Colorado School of Public Health and professor of epidemiology and occupational and environmental health, has extensive experience at the intersection of science and policy.
He has served on and chaired numerous committees for the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine. He also chaired the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee and the Food and Drug Administration’s Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee.
Given his background, Dr. Samet offers a unique perspective on what a second Trump administration could mean for scientific research, regulation, and public health.
Dr. Jonathan Samet: We know from the first (term) and from what has been said during the campaign that the place of science, public health science, may be diminished. So, I'm concerned. I'm concerned on a number of fronts: basic public health, doing the things that we know work, like vaccination, and moving forward with areas where we just have to make progress like climate change and particularly climate change and health.
Beth Bennett: Do you get that sense from your colleagues that there's a lot of concern about that?
Dr. Samet: Oh, of course. I think people are concerned about some of the broad agencies that are so important for our public health. Personally, I’m concerned about the Centers for Disease Control, the CDC, which has such a critical role in dealing with expected and unexpected public health problems.
Hopefully, everyone saw the critical role that the CDC needs to play during the bad years of the COVID-19 pandemic. CDC did not do as good a job as it should have. And I think if we have weak leadership there or inexperienced leadership and we have a problem, I think it could be telling.
Bennett: Okay, so Jon, I'm going to put you on the spot now and ask you to do a little predicting. In terms of the kinds of committees that you serve on, what do you expect will happen? Do you think that past policies will be weakened or discarded? Or is it more a matter of concern for future questions that are going to come up that will be maybe weakened?
Dr. Samet: You know, it's going to be a pivotal moment. I mean, we have a change in administration. The Supreme Court had made some important decisions particularly the Chevron decision, which has to do with deference of the courts to the regulatory agencies. That was a decision that has now been replaced.
So I think we will be in a position to see—and this has been on the agenda for the incoming Trump administration—would be less regulation, probably stakeholder interests, i.e. industry, becoming more powerful than they have been. And I think a push towards seeing committees that will go along with finding that the science may support deregulation, that perhaps air quality standards or management of a particular chemical may not need to be as stringent as it has been.
I think the other thing that we've seen, and again, I don't know where this will go, a lot of discussion recently of fluoridation of water. Whether that is appropriate from the public health point of view, whether fluoridation is reducing the intelligence of children to some degree, and we may see that perhaps there'll be efforts to reverse some long-standing public health measures.
I certainly hope that we don't weaken vaccination policies which protect our children against some bad diseases. I mean, can you imagine seeing a resurgence of polio in the United States because we don't vaccinate children for polio? That would be tragic.
Bennett: So what has been your experience in the past when administrations change? Has there been pretty much continuation, given that science has been a bottom line?
Dr. Samet: That's an interesting question. I mean, so let's look at air pollution and take the long view. The Clean Air Act dates to 1970 and of course, it then-President Richard Nixon, in whose administration the Clean Air Act was passed.
And I think the public in general has wanted a clean environment and cleaner air, so I don't think that some things are going to be under threat. I don't think that we would have, for example, a loosening of air quality standards.
I can see that with ozone, an important pollutant here in the Front Range, that there could well be a lot of discussion and jockeying around whether the ozone standard would get tightened the next time it is considered for revision. And there I think the administration will make a difference. It's possibly around the fundamental laws, the way that chemical risks or other aspects of the environment are regulated, that we will see changes with a new administration.
And there's the broad issue, of course, of greenhouse gases and the steps taken in the Biden Administration to reduce emissions and where those policy measures will go. So I think it would be appropriate to consider that we are going to see some changes.
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