I have willingly taken three COVID-vaccine injections [thus far] and usually receive the annual influenza vaccine. Nevertheless, I feel the term ‘science’ gets used a bit too readily/frequently nowadays, including for political or self-serving purposes. Also, I’m cautious of blindly buying into (what I call) speculative science.

Due to increasingly common privatized research for corporate profit aims, sometimes even ‘science’ can be for sale. Notably, questionable research results are sometimes publicly amplified if they favor the corporate product; and, conversely, accurate research results can be suppressed or ignored if they are unfavorable to business interests, even when involving human health.

Also, mega-corporation lobbyists — especially those representing the huge and very powerful/influential pharmaceutical industry — tend to pull corpocratically orientated Western governments [especially those of Canada and the U.S.] by the nose.

Once in power, established political parties will kowtow to big business’s threats of transferring or eliminating jobs and capital investment, thus economic stability, if corporate ‘requests’ aren’t accommodated.

In any event, such lobbyist manipulation does not belong in any government body, such as Health Canada or the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, that was established to protect consumers’ safety and health rather than big businesses’ insatiable profit goals.

In regards to the integrity of scientific research, findings and commercialization, Prof. Eva Mendez, of Carlos III University of Madrid, was quoted in the May 29, 2023, edition of The Christian Science Monitor Weekly [Perspectives, Global Newsstand, El Pais/Madrid] as pointedly asking/stating:

“How can a researcher publish a scientific study every 37 hours? … How can … universities and governments pay huge sums of money to get a researcher to change their affiliation? These are just some of the many questions I’ve been asked since EL PAIS reported on cases involving a lack of scientific integrity, in which Saudi Arabian universities paid large stipends to European academics to get them to swap their affiliations. …

“The issues of integrity and commercialization in the field of science — which we’re seeing today at an accelerated pace — are reflective of an outdated, ineffective and underfunded scientific system. … ‘Publish or perish’ has given rise to unethical conduct. … To prevent the current system from sinking even further … researchers, institutions and other parties have to break the deadly cliques and commercialization within science.”