Science, Climate Change, and Blastocystis

July 14, 2010. In May, 255 scientists from the National Academy of Scientists wrote to the journal Science to protest the "assault on climate change scientists" arising out of documents that were leaked from a lab showing scientists had falsified results. The complaint goes onto say that:

"Like all human beings, scientists make mistakes, but the scientific process is designed to find and correct them. This process is inherently adversarial—scientists build reputations and gain recognition not only for supporting conventional wisdom, but even more so for demonstrating that the scientific consensus is wrong and that there is a better explanation."

This may be small comfort to patients with Blastocystis infection, as we enter the 16th year in which the National Institutes of Health has refused to provide a single penny to identify a treatment for the disease, stating that whether this infection is causing disease is undecided in the eyes of the NIH. What is remarkable in the case of Blastocystis is the volume of scientific papers that have accumulated from outside the United States identifying the organism as disease causing, and the nature of the advanced studies being done on Blastocystis overseas.

Chinese researchers have been developing animal models for the infection for years. Researchers in Malaysia are identifying the components of Blastocystis which down-regulate immune functions in humans. One of the longest running labs in Singapore has started doing genomic work, and also identifying host-parasite interactions. The Pasteur Institute in France has also chimed in with phylogenetics work, while a WHO Coordinating Center for Parasitology in Australia has done large studies on Blastocystis subtypes in zookeepers and the animals they look after.

But in the United States, you wouldn't know any of this is going on. The piece that the scientists left out was that if you promote a theory, and someone proves you are wrong, you lose status. The NIH has been funding a series of researchers who support a competing theory to what the rest of the world says. They believe Blastocystis is harmless, and patients have IBS, which is caused by a mechanism that they are going to discover with more money from the NIH. They've been saying this for 20 years, but still haven't discovered it. Unfortunately, their work dominates US medical thought, and they have enough influence to make sure that people won't apply for funding, or if they apply, it won't be granted.

This is where science breaks down, and it's the topic of research by Dr. Fran Collyer. She contends that much of what we take as "science" is culturally determined, and strongly influenced by rivalries between research groups. This may be especially true in medical science, because there are few economic forces driving physicians and scientists toward factual explanations. Indeed, for most of human history, physicians had lousy ideas about what caused illness, and probably killed more patients than they cured. Blood letting was an acceptable therapy for dozens of illnesses until the early 1900's.

The NIH actually had one of the leading research efforts in the world until the mid-1990's. The 15-year effort found Blastocystis to be disease causing and identified most of the symptoms that patients are reporting today, and also noted that the drug metronidazole wasn't working anymore and needed to be replaced. That was 1993. The NIH shuttered the effort in 1995, following complaints from two physicians at an HMO in California. No grants have been approved since then, and researchers have told BRF that the NIH has indicated that in their view, there is no proof Blastocystis is causing disease. NIH replies to petitions and congressional requests have been met with similar statements. BRF estimates that there are now 30-60 million cases of infection in the US, most of them acquired in the last 15 years, and most patients will remain sick until the end of their lives unless a treatment is developed.

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The letter from the climate change scientists goes onto say, "we can ignore the science and hide our heads in the sand and hope we are lucky, or we can act in the public interest to reduce the threat of global climate change quickly and substantively."

How I wish they would change "global climate change" to Blastocystis and re-send that letter to the NIH.