2023年2月，一列载有氯乙烯的诺福克南方铁路列车在俄亥俄州东巴勒斯坦地区脱轨。几天后，官员们将这些危险化学品释放到空气中并进行了焚烧，导致大量黑烟笼罩了我们的家园、学校和农田。我住在距离事故现场一英里的地方，在这种充满不确定性的环境中抚养着自己的孩子。从那以后，我的社区最常问的一个问题是：这些化学物质对我们的身体造成了什么影响？
In February 2023, a Norfolk Southern train carrying vinyl chloride derailed in East Palestine, Ohio. Days later, officials vented and burned the chemicals, sending a black plume over our homes, our schools and our farms. I lived a mile away, raising my kids under a cloud of uncertainty. Since then, my community has asked one question more than any other: What did this do to our bodies? Presidents and cabinet secretaries came. Cameras came. Most of them left.
多位总统和内阁成员前来调查，许多媒体也进行了报道；不过大多数人最终都离开了现场，只有科学家们留了下来——因为他们得到了美国国立卫生研究院（NIH）的资助。通过美国国家环境卫生科学研究所（National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences）的资助，研究人员多年来一直在收集当地居民提供的血液、尿液、空气和土壤样本。
The scientists stayed. They stayed because the National Institutes of Health funded them. Through the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, researchers have spent years collecting blood, urine, air and soil samples from residents who volunteered their own bodies and homes as evidence.
最近发表在《环境科学与技术》（Environmental Science & Technology）杂志上的一项研究结果令人震惊：在灾难发生五个月后，接受检测的东巴勒斯坦居民中，有74%的人的尿液中检测出了与氯乙烯及其相关化合物有关的物质（称为“HEMA”）。而在俄亥俄州马里埃塔（Marietta）的对照组中，却没有发现这种物质；在全国范围内，只有约5%的人体内检测到了该物质。
One finding, published in Environmental Science & Technology, should stop anyone in their tracks. Our research team found HEMA, a breakdown product linked to vinyl chloride and related compounds, in the urine of 74 percent of East Palestine residents tested five months after the disaster. In a comparison group from Marietta, Ohio, they found it in none. Nationally, it shows up in about 5 percent of people.
这正是美国国立卫生研究院资助研究项目所带来的成果——那些其他人根本无法发现的答案。如今，白宫希望改变这些研究资金的分配方式。据《纽约时报》报道，美国管理和预算办公室（Office of Management and Budget）正在起草一项行政命令，计划设立一个外部委员会，该委员会有权否决那些不符合总统政治议程的研究项目。
That is what NIH funding buys: answers no one else would find. Now the White House wants to change how those dollars are awarded. According to The New York Times, the Office of Management and Budget is drafting an executive order that would create an outside committee empowered to veto NIH grants that don't fit the president's political agenda.
这一决定源于一次充满争议的椭圆形办公室会议：管理和预算办公室主任拉塞尔·沃特（Russell Vought）指责美国国立卫生研究院院长杰伊·巴塔查里亚（Jay Bhattacharya）资助的研究项目与政府的政策方向相悖。尽管巴塔查里亚表示反对，但美国国立卫生研究院多年来一直沿用相同的资金分配机制——由专家们评估研究项目的科学价值，并资助那些最有可能带来实质性成果的项目。然而，一个政治性的委员会很可能会提出完全不同的评估标准。
It grew out of a contentious Oval Office meeting where Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought accused NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya of funding work at odds with administration priorities. Bhattacharya has resisted. For decades, NIH has picked projects the same way. Experts review the science and fund what is most likely to produce answers. A political committee would potentially ask a different question.
不是“这项科学研究好不好？”，而是“这是否符合我们的政治议程？”这个问题应该让像我这样的每一个社区都感到担忧。东巴勒斯坦是一个小型、保守、工薪阶层的村庄。我们不是常春藤盟校的校园，也不是任何人的文化战争的筹码。但服务于我们的研究，恰恰是那种可能登上否决名单的工作。环境健康研究经常会得出对包括铁路在内的强大行业不利的关于收入、地理和职业如何影响健康结果的研究属于健康差异研究；这是一个在最近的行政命令下已经被缩减的领域。
Not "Is this good science?" but "Does this meet our agenda?" That question should worry every community like mine. East Palestine is a small, conservative, working-class village. We are not an Ivy League campus, and we are not anyone's culture war. But the research that serves us is exactly the kind of work that could land on a veto list. Environmental health studies routinely produce findings inconvenient for powerful industries, including railroads. Research on how income, geography and occupation shape health outcomes is disparities research; a field already cut back under recent executive orders.
农村阿巴拉契亚山脉以及全国许多其他边缘化社区都生活在这些统计数据之中。否决权不必经常使用就能造成损害。它的存在本身就足够了。计划未来十年职业生涯的研究人员会避开任何在管理和预算办公室的人看来可能带有政治色彩的研究。面临下一次化学灾难的社区将发现愿意伸出援手的科学家越来越少。而且灾难还在不断发生。
Rural Appalachia lives inside those statistics as do many other marginalized communities across the nation. A veto doesn't have to be used often to do damage. Its existence is enough. Researchers planning the next decade of their careers will steer away from any study that might look political to someone at the Office of Management and Budget. Communities facing the next chemical disaster will find fewer scientists willing to show up. And disasters keep happening.
脱轨、工业火灾、野火和化学品泄漏每年都在发生，每一次都让家庭提出我们曾问过的问题。一些健康影响需要几十年的时间才会显现。今天暴露在环境中的儿童直到成年才会表现出某些结果。回答这些问题需要对同一群人进行多年的追踪。随时可能被中途撤回的经费是无人能够据此进行规划的经费。它还打破了信任，而信任是最难重建的东西。
Derailments, industrial fires, wildfires and chemical spills happen every year, and each one leaves families asking what we asked. Some health effects take decades to appear. Children exposed today will not show certain outcomes until they are adults. Answering those questions requires following the same people for years. A grant that can be yanked midstream is a grant no one can plan around. It also breaks trust, and trust is the hardest thing to rebuild.
我的邻居们并不是轻率地交出他们的血液和尿液样本的。许多人已经感到被那些告诉他们一切都很好的机构抛弃了。他们参与了，并且在多年后继续参与，因为研究人员承诺会留下来并分享他们的发现。如果华盛顿能因为一项研究的政治因素而取消这一承诺，参与者将不再相信任何承诺。国会已经表明它理解这一点。
My neighbors did not hand over their blood and urine lightly. Many already felt abandoned by agencies that told them everything was fine. They participated, and continued to participate years later, because researchers promised to stay and to share what they found. If Washington can cancel that promise over the politics of a study, participants will stop believing any promise at all. Congress has already shown it understands this.
立法者否决了政府削减生物医学研究的提案，并阻止了一项将政治审查引入联邦拨款的规则。这是正确的决定。但临时的阻止无法阻挡一项永久性的命令。立法者应利用今年的拨款法案，以法律形式保护同行评审，禁止联邦资金资助任何能够推翻美国国立卫生研究院（NIH）拨款专家评审的机构，并保护已获拨款免受政治性取消。
Lawmakers rejected the administration's proposed cuts to biomedical research and blocked a rule injecting political review into federal grantmaking. That was the right call. But a temporary block won't stop a permanent order. Lawmakers should use this year's appropriations bills to protect peer review in law, bar federal funds from supporting any body that can overrule expert review of NIH grants and protect awarded grants from political cancellation.
这并非党派诉求。择优评审机制同样服务于共和党和民主党政府，也惠及红色选区和蓝色选区。东巴勒斯坦并未选择这场灾难。我们选择帮助科学来应对它，为了我们自己，也为了下一个受影响的人。哪些问题是值得探究的，这是科学家耗费职业生涯才能学会的判断。管理预算办公室的委员会并不具备推翻这一判断的资格。
This is not a partisan ask. Merit review has served Republican and Democratic administrations alike, and red counties just as well as blue ones. East Palestine did not choose this disaster. We chose to help science answer it, for ourselves and for whoever is next. Which questions are worth asking is a judgment scientists spend careers learning to make. It is not one that a committee at the Office of Management and Budget is qualified to overrule.
米斯蒂·艾莉森是东巴勒斯坦火车脱轨健康研究计划的社区咨询委员会主席，也是灾难之声研究所的创始人。她居住在俄亥俄州东巴勒斯坦。
Misti Allison is the Community Advisory Board chair of the East Palestine Train Derailment Health Research Program and founder of Disaster Voices Institute. She lives in East Palestine, Ohio.