MAGA has won the war against science

THIS IS THE STORY of two Republican doctor-senators named Bill.

- JILL LAWRENCE GUEST CONTRIBUTOR

ALEX WONG Getty Images AS SENATE majority leader, Bill Frist, left, helped fund President Bush's initiative to combat AIDS.

One of them, as majority leader from 2003 to 2007, helped a self-described “compassionate conservative” Republican president pass a Medicare prescription drug plan and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), “the largest commitment by any nation to address a single disease in history.”

The other, as a member of the Senate Finance Committee, voted to send Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination as secretary of Health and Human Services to the Senate floor. It was a 14-13 vote, so his was a crucial “aye” that allowed a conspiracy theorist, disinformation spreader and anti-vaxxer to become the top public health official in America. He already has defunded world-changing mRNA vaccine research, imposed major restrictions on access to COVID vaccines amid a surging variant of the virus and triggered a crisis at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“The firewall between science and ideology is completely broken down,” Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, former director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” He was part of the shocking CDC leadership exodus last week after the Trump administration forced out CDC Director Susan Monarez.

The trajectory from heart and lung transplant surgeon Bill Frist of Tennessee to gastroenterologist Bill Cassidy of Louisiana is emblematic of the dark Republican Party journey on science and health — from the Bush family to the Trump family, from American greatness to self-defeating denialism on everything from vaccines to cancer research.