The Decline of Forensic Science in the United States

In July, the New York Times ran a stuck on a report from the National Research Council that said the country is losing its ability to perform nuclear forensics - the process of examining fallout from a nuclear blast to determine which country produced the fissionable nuclear fuel in the device.

The NRC didn't cover another area which is just as important - infectious disease forensics for parasitic infections. Anyone who has developed unexplained illness after traveling in a foreign country, or even here at home, knows what I am talking about. There are a few diseases US doctors can diagnose readily. But we have no tools, or experts, to diagnose most of the diseases which people are contracting world-wide. That goes for things like Blastocystis infection, as well as Leishmania, Strongyloides, and a number of other viral, bacterial, and protozoal infections.

The two topics - forensic work in nuclear blasts and parasitic infections - aren't as different as you might think. In scientific research in the US, the NSF (and NIH) have had a long-standing policy of simply funding things that scientists want to do. That is, they don't look at their research portfolio, and identify critical areas, and make sure those get funded regularly to maintain a competency in a particular area. Additionally, we lack any kind of national laboratory effort to ensure an ongoing competency in specialized areas of research.

The result? Scientists are dumb. Given the option, they will choose job security, which means they will choose areas of study that ensure they will be readily employable. In infectious disease work in the US, this means studying viruses (like HIV) and bacterial infections. No, we don't need an army of research parasitologists, but we do need 10 or 20 of them available to look at new infections, and amazingly, in the entire US, we don't have a single research parasitologist (there are a handful who look at E. histolytica or Giardia as well as malaria, but they aren't available for new diseases). The problem with nuclear forensics is similar. How are you going to convince a 20-something just graduated from MIT or Stanford to go into a field called "nuclear forensics" where you study bomb blasts. They'd be thinking, "Oh yeah, I'll be able to support myself with that job."

The result? When you get back to the US after having contracted one of these diseases overseas, you will be diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), an auto-immune disease, or a psychiatric disease. Just ask the Gulf War Veterans. They've been sick for over 20 years, and the best explanation anyone has come up with is that they were affected by those Weapons of Mass Destruction that Saddam had, or didn't actually have as the case may be.


References:

Broad, W. US Nuclear Forensics Skill is Declining. New York Times, July 29, 2010

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/30/us/30nuke.html?_r=2&hp