Author Dr. Robert Saul

Raising Young Citizens in the Age of Columbine

Innovate…for the Children

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Innovation represents the triumph of the human spirit, the human condition.  The ability to observe, to question, to wonder, to experiment, to fail, to try again and to persist are the qualities of innovators.  The positive change from innovation can be a great benefit.  Such innovation relies on a robust system of research and an equally encouraging system of educational and academic pursuits.  Only an environment of welcomed inquiry can lead to the type of invention and innovation that will serve us all.

For me, the long term of effects of innovation are primarily benefits for our children and their progeny, i.e., the generational changes to come.  The seven great pediatric achievements over the 40 years prior to 2016 are prime examples of innovation that benefit children.1  Yet, we are entering dangerous times, times where research is being squelched, discouraged and defunded.  Educational and academic pursuits are viewed with disdain.  We will all suffer but children will sustain disproportionate injury.

One of the most harmful effects of the current toxic environment toward science is the profound misunderstanding and distrust in the scientific method.  A quote attributed to Leonardo da Vinci sums it up quite well – “Experiments never err, only your expectations do.”2 (p. 131)  Not all experiments or scientific inquiry will yield the expected results, yet the experiment and the inquiry demonstrate observations worth recording and learning from.

Indeed, the results, expected or unexpected, are what drive further inquiry and the need to go farther to explain the results.  Positive results are never easily obtained and, more often than not, they only come after a vast body of work that impacts the whole scientific community and often unintended for the primary investigator.  Serendipity and unpredictability are the friends of science and research.  Let me give you three examples.  Other examples abound. (The first two examples are well documented in the book ABUNDANCE by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson.2)

  • Karalin Karikó immigrated from Hungary and subsequently pursued research in messenger RNA (mRNA), a primary molecule in the conversion of genes to active proteins in the body.2 Her research was vastly underrecognized and led to multiple academic disappointments.  One day while waiting at the office copier, she had a chance encounter with an immunologist, Drew Weissman.  The subsequent synergy of their research led to the recognition of mRNA as a therapeutic modality.  Twenty-three years after their copier meeting, mRNA was recognized as the primary tool to create a vaccine that could turn the COVID-19 pandemic around.  The really miraculous development and deployment of a vaccine in less than 1 year has its roots in the serendipity of the meeting at the office copier.  Their work saved millions of lives.  In 2023, Karikó and Weissman were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
  • Experiments looking at the Gila monster back in the 1990s noted a hormone in the venom that explained the ability of this big lizard to go months between meals.2 The subsequent synthesis of a medicine (GLP-1 agonist) from this hormone was shown to help reduce blood sugar levels in some patients with diabetes.  And now, we know its profound effects on obesity management.  Take a minute to let that sink in.  A profound advancement in obesity care is secondary to research on lizard spit!
  • In the early 1980s, I published a case report of a patient with significant short stature and other unique features in the first volume of the Proceedings of the Greenwood Genetic Center.3 A colleague in Virginia, Dr. Bill Wilson, subsequently contacted me with a similar patient, and we reported these two cases.4  Fast forward twenty plus years and we find that Dr. Ferreira and colleagues (56 in total!) at the NIH and across the scientific community delineated the specific gene defect and how the defect affects cell development.  What started as a singular observation at a genetics clinic in South Carolina was decades later identified as a unique condition, the Saul-Wilson syndrome, with an incredible understanding of human physiology.5-7   The serendipity of these events coalescing into this important discovery is incredible.  The robust system of interactive scientific inquiry and research will continue to lead to advances as in this scenario and likely subsequently lead to therapeutic advances.

My point.  I am very concerned that the attacks on research and the defunding of research (NIH, EPA, NOAA, CDC and other agencies), the attacks on science and academic institutions, the attacks on public health initiatives, and the attacks on scientific inquiry in general will drastically poison the waters of innovation.  These attacks are currently soiling efforts to help others (vaccine denialism, for example).  But these attacks will also harm our immediate future (in the next five to ten years).  They will harm the short-term future in the next ten to twenty years. They will harm generations to come.  These attacks will willfully ignore the importance of copier meetings, lizard spit and journals that disseminate scientific information.

One might think that these harms are quickly reversible.  Wrong!  When mistrust is sowed and falsehoods are spread, the harms take a long time to correct.  One of the joys of my professional career has been the realization of the seven pediatric achievements referenced above.1  Those achievements would never have occurred in the current environment.  Reducing infectious diseases, reducing sudden infant deaths, curing some childhood cancer, saving premature babies, preventing HIV transmission, increasing life expectancy for chronic disease, and saving lives with the promotion of seat belt use would have been severely hampered by our present circumstances.

I am profoundly saddened by these conditions but refuse to be deterred in my resolve to speak out.  I ask all of us to feel similar outrage and never give in to this suppression of research and innovation.  Ignorance of the importance of science and the scientific method, ignorance of the importance of unfettered scientific collaboration and academic pursuits, and ignorance of the importance of appropriate funding for these efforts are so damaging.

Let’s remember the primary targets of these negative efforts – children.  We often hear the argument that government debt is mortgaging the future of our children.  I think that argument is bogus.  These negative efforts are not just mortgaging the future of our children but sabotaging their future.  We cannot accept this.  Innovate for our children, for all of our children.

 

  1. https://mychildrenschildren.com/seven-great-pediatric-achievements-under-threat/
  2. Klein E, Thompson D. Abundance. Avid Reader Press, New York; 2025. 288 pp.
  3. SaulUnknown cases. Proc .Greenwood Genet. Center 1: 102-103, 1982.
  4. Saul RA, Wilson WG: A “new” skeletal dysplasia in two unrelated boys, Am J Med Genet 35:388-393, 1990.
  5. Ferreira, C. R., Xia, Z.-J., Clement, A., Parry, D. A., Davids, M., Taylan, F., Sharma, P., Turgeon, C. T., Blanco-Sanchez, B., Ng, B. G., Logan, C. V., Wolfe, L. A., and 44 others.  A recurrent de novo heterozygous COG4 substitution leads to Saul-Wilsonsyndrome, disrupted vesicular trafficking, and altered proteoglycan glycosylation. J. Hum. Genet. 103: 553-567, 2018.
  6. Saul RA, Wilson WG. COMMENTARY – The Saul-Wilson syndrome from its early days until now. Am J Med Genet Part A. 2019;179A:159-160. https://doi.org/10.10002/ajmg.a.8
  7. https://omim.org/entry/618150?search=%22saul-wilson%20syndrome%22&highlight=saul%2Csaulwilson%2Csyndrome%2Csyndromic%2Cwilson