by Kim J. Hasenkrug, retired RML employee, NIH Scientist Emeritus
Rocky Mountain Labs is a state-of-the-art biomedical research facility, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) nestled in the heart of the Bitterroot valley in Montana. The primary focus of the lab is basic research on dangerous infectious diseases such as antibiotic-resistant bacteria, Ebola virus and other hemorrhagic fever viruses, coronaviruses (like COVID-19), prion diseases (like mad cow disease and chronic wasting disease), Lyme disease, and others. Newly confirmed Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants the NIH to concentrate less on infectious diseases and more on chronic diseases. In November of 2024, he stated to an anti-vaccine group, “I’m gonna say to NIH scientists, ‘God bless you all. Thank you for public service. We’re going to give infectious disease a break for about eight years.’” He confirmed this stance during his confirmation hearings saying, “We’ve devoted all of these dollars to infectious disease and to drug development and very little to chronic disease.” While this rhetoric may appeal at a political level, it makes little or no sense to the scientists studying infectious diseases and/or chronic diseases, because in many cases the two are inextricably linked. It is important to note some examples of these links to illustrate that taking a break on studying infectious diseases not only puts Americans at higher risk of pathogenic infections, possibly on a pandemic scale, but also damages our ability to understand, prevent, and treat chronic diseases.
Approximately 90% of Americans become infected with Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) at some time in their lives. EBV is a member of the herpesvirus family, notorious for causing lifelong chronic infections. This nasty little pathogen has been associated with numerous chronic diseases including systemic lupus erythematosus, Sjogren’s syndrome, rheumatoid arthritis, and most recently, multiple sclerosis. Congenital infection of babies with Cytomegalovirus (CMV…another herpesvirus) is the most common cause of birth defects in the US, and can result in deafness, blindness, epileptic seizures and brain damage. Like EBV, CMV infections remain in an infected person for life, and if that person becomes immunocompromised, such as for treatment of cancer or kidney transplantation, the virus can reactivate and produce serious complications such as vision loss, brain damage, liver inflammation, and even death. It can take up to 2 years to resolve infections with human pappilomavirus (HPV) and sometimes the infections never resolve but progress to cancers of the cervix, vulva, vagina, penis, anus, mouth, tonsils and throat. HPV infections can also be spread from a pregnant mother to her baby.
Everyone has probably noticed that there is currently an outbreak of measles in the US, an infection that can cause deafness, blindness, and permanent brain damage. Frighteningly, some children infected with measles will develop a chronic degenerative and fatal neurological disease an average of seven years after they contract the disease. Furthermore, measles infections can wipe out immunological memory cells, making individuals susceptible to infections for which they previously had immune protection. By this point, most Americans have had COVID-19, and most recovered well. However, a significant proportion of infected persons (over 10% for some SARS-CoV-2 variants) develop “long COVID”, a diverse set of chronic health problems affecting multiple systems including the gut, cardiovascular system, and brain. NIH is spending more than 1.75 billion dollars in the “Recover” project to research long COVID, develop an understanding of the pathophysiology, and create and test new therapies. Another important virus that still causes chronic health issues is HIV. There are currently over one million people in the US living with HIV, and they are at higher risk of developing cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, liver disease, diabetes, and certain types of cancer. Even more Americans (over 5 million) are chronically infected with either Hepatitis B or C viruses. These infections can cause inflammation and damage to the liver that can lead to cirrhosis and liver cancer. Furthermore, Hepatitis C virus, in combination with H. pylori infections, has recently been linked to Parkinson’s disease, a progressive neurological disorder that affects nearly one million Americans.
The mention of Parkinson’s disease can be used to illustrate how studying infectious diseases can lead to breakthroughs in chronic disease. NIH investigators at Rocky Mountain Labs were studying the biology of prion diseases, one of which famously caused an outbreak of “Mad Cow Disease” in humans, and another that is spreading in the form of chronic wasting disease in deer and elk populations in the US. The scientists developed a unique diagnostic test and realized that a similar test could be devised to diagnose Parkinson’s disease, for which there was no simple and definitive diagnostic. The result was a highly accurate and quick assay for Parkinson’s that could differentiate it from other neurological disorders. There is a general misconception that when scientists are studying a particular pathogen, then that is all that they are studying. Not so. The large majority of NIH scientists are performing basic research to uncover the mysteries of how biology works to create healthy life, what goes wrong when life becomes diseased, and how to prevent disease from happening or treat it when it happens. The study of how infectious agents disrupt normal physiological processes provides us a tremendous amount of insight into the complex mechanisms that govern life itself.
It is probably obvious to most scientists and lay persons as well, that there are vaccines for some of the infectious diseases mentioned above. COVID-19 vaccines are not only highly effective in preventing serious disease and hospitalization but also reduce the incidence of long COVID. The HPV vaccine is associated with a marked reduction in cervical cancer. As of this writing, of 257 measles cases reported in Texas, all but 2 are in the unvaccinated. The child who died was unvaccinated. As Matthew Herper recently reported in STAT, secretary RFK Jr. continues to spread falsehoods and misinformation about the safety and efficacy of the measles vaccine. Dozens of well-controlled studies on hundreds of thousands of children have repeatedly demonstrated that the measles vaccine is highly efficacious and extremely safe. The vaccine does not, as Kennedy stated, cause the same illnesses that the virus causes. It prevents those illnesses. It does not routinely cause deaths. It prevents deaths. Kennedy has written that he would work to “return our health agencies to their rich tradition of gold-standard, evidence-based science”. It is not our agencies that have left that tradition, but rather Kennedy himself. The health agencies of the United States lead the world in cutting edge science, and the ongoing efforts of the administration to paralyze them with involuntary terminations, spending freezes, travel restrictions and communications restrictions puts Americans’ health at risk and weakens our national security. I can think of no bigger waste of taxpayer dollars than Mr. Kennedy’s plan for the CDC to relitigate the already disproven link between measles vaccines and autism. It is settled science. There is no link, which the secretary is either unwilling or incapable of accepting because of his lack of authoritative scientific training, his preconceived notions, or his vested interests. Mr. Kennedy is doing a tremendous disservice to the American people by spreading falsehoods, conspiracy theories and disinformation about vaccines on behalf of the federal government. And President Trump has done Americans a tremendous disservice by appointing such an incompetent person as the secretary of Health and Human Services.
Many people view the tax money spent by NIH as far removed from any personal benefit. Think about this though. Completely aside from the health benefits provided to the general public, Rocky Mountain Labs (RML) is a major driver of the Bitterroot economy. For every person employed at the lab, there are two full time jobs outside the lab accounting for $89.2 million per year in after-tax, expendable salaries. Montana business and non-business entities receive $231.8 million in additional yearly income from the presence of RML. And for every dollar invested in the NIH, an average of $2.46 in economic activity is generated. Furthermore, the next generations of scientists are taught and trained at RML, beginning with the middle schoolers in the valley who benefit from BRASS (the volunteer outreach program taught by numerous RML Ph.D.s), and reaching to college students who train at RML during summer internships, college graduates doing 2 year fellowships, Ph.D. students from universities including Montana’s, and post-doctoral fellows training to do independent research or work in industry. The federal workers and contractors at RML add multidimensional value to the Bitterroot valley community that is not possible to replace. They deserve your support and that of the city, county, state, and federal governments that they rely on to continue their important work.
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