By Peter Hotez, Dean, National School of Tropical Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine
The COVID-19 pandemic revealed the heroism of our nation’s health care providers, as well as the power of science to rapidly develop life-saving interventions.
By one estimate, COVID-19 vaccines saved 3 million American lives and averted 18 million hospitalizations. Lives were also saved because of the rapid discovery and delivery of Paxlovid, Molnupiravir and other antiviral drugs. In parallel, our ICU physicians and nurses determined that rapid administration of steroid, anticoagulants and oxygen could save hundreds of thousands of lives. The bottom line: Biomedical science delivered for the American people.
Yet there was a dark side to how the American people viewed science as the pandemic also shone a spotlight on rising attacks against both science and scientists. At least 200,000 Americans died needlessly because they shunned COVID-19 vaccines in 2021–22 even though the vaccines were widely available and 90% protective against severe illness and death. They became victims of a coordinated and politically motivated antivaccine and antiscience movement, which also disparaged masks, medications and other COVID-19 prevention measures. In some instances, prominent American scientists were vilified as public enemies and there was even a House COVID-19 select subcommittee in the U.S. Congress that sought to humiliate scientists and parade them in front of CSPAN cameras, when in reality, they spent their time heroically trying to save lives.
Another horrible element of the pandemic was an effort to blame the spread of COVID-19 or its origins on the Jews both online and on podcasts across America and globally. Often Jewish or Israeli scientists were blamed for creating the COVID-19 virus or for accelerating its global transmission in order to profit off of vaccines. And sadly, all of these antisemitic tropes are not new: Going back to the time of the Black Death in the 1300s, the Jewish people in Europe were hunted or killed in pogroms after accusations they poisoned the wells to start the plague. In Weimar, Germany, during the 1920s and 1930s, Jewish scientists were accused of practicing their own special brand of science and ultimately were forced out of German universities or required to flee to Turkey, England, or to North and South America.
Together with the Holocaust Museum Houston, we are hosting “Antiscience and Antisemitism: An Alarming Convergence,” a high-level conference, April 8–9, 2025. The two-day conference will explore the well-documented rise in antisemitism across the United States and globally. A troubling, but seldom discussed element, includes the increasing links between antiscience and antisemitism. Such touchpoints are both historical and recent. The antisemitic attacks against Einstein and Freud in Weimar, Germany, or those targeting Jewish doctors in Stalinist Russia are well established, but often forgotten. Tragically, similar attacks against COVID scientists during the pandemic and blaming the Jewish people for creating the pandemic bear an eerie resemblance to those early mid-20th-century sentiments. Still another aspect are the attacks on Jewish climate scientists or claims that climate change is a Jewish conspiracy.
The conference, jointly organized by Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, and Matthias Henze, director of the Program in Jewish Studies at Rice University, will feature other prominent speakers, including Gavin Yamey from Duke University; Arthur Caplan from NYU; Dorit Reiss from UC Law San Francisco; Mike Rothschild, author of the acclaimed book, “Jewish Space Lasers”; Sheldon Rubenfeld from Houston Methodist Hospital; Laurie Zoloth from the University of Chicago Divinity School; and more.