Vyshnavi Karra - Necessary Symbiosis: What Happens When Science and Government Work Together (And When They Dont)

Necessary Symbiosis: What Happens When Science and Government Work Together (And When They Dont) — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Necessary Symbiosis: What Happens When Science and Government Work Together (And When They Dont)" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

1234567...44

new degree press

copyright 2020 Vyshnavi Karra

All rightsreserved.

Necessary Symbiosis

What Happens When Science and Government Work Together (and When They Dont)

ISBN
978-1-63676-642-3 Paperback
978-1-63676-172-5 Kindle Ebook
978-1-63676-178-7 Digital Ebook

To my parents and friends for being wonderful beta readers.
To the rock of my life, David Farina, Jr., for being my inertia to write this book.

Contents

---

Part 1
SETTING THE STAGE

Chapter 1
How we got here

Part 2
WHEN THINGS GO WRONG

Chapter 2
Pandemics

Chapter 3
Climate change

Chapter 4
Anti-vaccination

Chapter 5
Data privacy

Part 3
HOW SCIENTISTS CAN ADVOCATE

Chapter 6
Personalized healthcare

Chapter 7
Using data for good

Chapter 8
March for science

Chapter 9
Conclusion

I do not share your view that the scientist should observe silence in political matters, i.e. human affairs in the broadest sense. The situation in Germany shows whither this restraint will lead: to the surrender of leadership, without any resistance, to those who are blind or irresponsible.

Albert Einstein

Introduction

---

Imagine your child has a neurological disorder and the only doctor in your state willing to treat your child thinks their word is law. That somehow their expertise in the field of medicine trumps your observations of what the medicine is doing to your child. Going from an outgoing, adventurous kid to an introverted kid with new phobias. And every time you try to explain to the doctor, Look, my child is changing in front of my own eyes, they blame you for the changes. Not the medicine. You, the parent. Its your fault your child has new phobias, even though the only thing that has changed is the medicine.

Would you stay with this insensitive doctor?

My parents didnt.

We had just moved from St. Louis to New Jersey in 2004, right before I started fifth grade, and we were searching the state for just one doctor to take on my brothers case.

My brothers first seizure happened when he was just four months old. By the time he was one year old, he had up to fifty small seizures a day. As he got older, the number of seizures diminished to about twenty and then down to about ten a day. But even then, they were debilitating. After every seizure, his teachers and my parents were essentially back to square one. He would forget much of what was taught to himthe concept of time, basic addition and subtraction, walking without fallingup to that point.

When my brother was five years old, he underwent a brain surgery at the St. Louis Childrens Hospital to remove half of his hippocampus after doctors pinpointed the source of his seizures. The hippocampus is essentially the brains memory bank, with a section for long-term memories and a section for short-term memories. But once the seizures started in the other half of his brain, the doctor said it was a matter of managing the seizures rather than trying to find a cure.

As he got older, his seizures subsided, but other behavioral issues appeared: bipolar disorder, autism spectrum disorder, attention-deficient/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Because of his autism, his life had to be rigidly structured, and I had to adapt to that kind of lifestyle. One clear example is that dinner in the Karra household had to be at exactly 6:00 p.m. Otherwise, there would be trouble. So, I ate dinner at 6:00 p.m. and had a small snack around 8:00 p.m. if I got hungry again.

When we moved to New Jersey, the doctor who berated my mom prescribed Lyrica to my brother as an add-on drug to treat his seizures since they were occurring from a localized area. But after being prescribed Lyrica, my brother became a different person.

He went from a rather outgoing child to someone who preferred being indoors, from being able to ride a bike to no longer being able to balance on uneven surfaces. He went from being more or less phobia free to someone with phobias to everything: loud noises, large crowds, specific scents, specific textures. But most of all, my brother gained a lot of weight, almost one hundred pounds in a year.

But the doctor still blamed my mother, not the medicine he prescribed, despite the fact that we did everything we possibly could to mitigate the weight gain.

Its baffling to me that this doctor ignored the evidence before his very eyes. Ill never forget the callous way he treated my mother during those visits, and all the times she would cry afterward when she thought I couldnt hear or see her.

It is because of that doctor, though, that I became interested in neuroscience, genetics, drugs, and healthcare policy. I saw that scientists wrote jargon-y journal articles on how drugs can affect the brains of mice and how genetics play a role in drug side effects, but I didnt see that translate to better healthcare policies or education policies. And I saw instances of doctors having a holier than thou attitude toward patients they are paid to treat.

Growing up as the sibling of a special-needs individual made my childhood very different from most others. It was filled with doctor visits, specialist visits, medicines with long names, and my brother taking different medicines multiple times a day. Im not saying my childhood wasnt full of wonderful memories. There were plenty of those, like road trips all over the US (because my brother couldnt fly). But the main thing I remember is watching my parents struggle to navigate the complex US healthcare system.

My parents fought tooth and nail for every little thing. They fought to have my brother moved from the local school district so he could go to a special-needs school, and they fought for the school district to pay for that. They fought to have a school bus come pick him up and got the school district to pay for it. They fought to have the local high school, the one I graduated from, allow my brother to be a water boy for the after-school sports activities. They fought for the school to pay for an aide to be with him during that time and to have the bus drop him off at that local high school instead of our home one day a week.

Former Governor Christies policies made the healthcare environment even more complex for individuals like my parents to navigate. For example, he privatized a lot of the programs run out of the Department of Children and Families. We were lucky because we had a great care manager for my brother. But not everyone was that lucky. Because families relied on private and local programs, rather than ones run by the state, not everyone could afford them or had the means to go to the programs. These types of policies need to be developed with input from healthcare workers, education experts, and social service workers, not be developed to pursue an idealized goal of small government which only benefits the few and not the masses, especially those who need government aid. Without establishing one government agency that oversees all programs and has a good deal of transparency, there will be opportunities for fraud and abuse.

Its because of the science-based advocacy that my parents continually worked for that my brother is happy at a great group home with loving and caring staff. Not every parent of a special-needs individual is as lucky as my parents. Not everyone knows how to navigate the system in addition to taking care of a special-needs individual 24/7, 365 days a year. And some dont have the time to learn how to navigate that system. So many special-needs kids are not in the right position to be able to work at day programs or join group homes after they turn twenty-one.

Next page

1234567...44

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Necessary Symbiosis: What Happens When Science and Government Work Together (And When They Dont)»

Look at similar books to Necessary Symbiosis: What Happens When Science and Government Work Together (And When They Dont). We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.

Paul Collins

The Government in Exile and Other Stories

Robyn Toomath

Fat Science: Why Diets and Exercise Dont Work--and What Does

Robyn Toomath

Fat Science: Why Diet and Exercise Dont Work--and What Does

George Currie

The Origins of CSIRO: Science and the Commonwealth Government 1901-1926

Peter Karsten

The Military-State-Society Symbiosis

Curtis

Dont Look, Dont Touch, Dont Eat: The Science Behind Revulsion

Otto

Fool me twice: fighting the assault on science in America

Barber

How to run a government: so that citizens benefit and taxpayers dont go crazy

Edwards Marc A.

Science for sale: how the US government uses powerful corporations and leading universities to support government policies, silence top scientists, jeopardize our health, and protect corporate profits

Rothbard M.

Science, Technology and Government

David L. Lewis PhD

Science for sale : how the US government uses powerful corporations and leading universities to support government policies, silence top scientists, jeopardize our health, and protect corporate

Shawn Lawrence Otto

Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America

Discussion, reviews of the book Necessary Symbiosis: What Happens When Science and Government Work Together (And When They Dont) and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.