As a UC Berkeley School of Public Health grad, this Lancet editorial lands close to home.

My Grand-Uncle Buck contracted polio as a toddler, before the polio vaccine was discovered. Though he had a brilliant mind, he lived a severely diminished life, never able to reach his full potential. He is the reason I understand viscerally what is at stake when science-backed public health policy is dismantled.

Our country grew and thrived because decision makers understood a critical truth: public health policy must be rooted in sound evidence-based science. Vaccines, sanitation, clean water, food safety standards, these weren’t political decisions. They were science. And they worked.

What we are witnessing now, revisionist history, junk science and fringe beliefs based on nothing is not reform. It is destruction.

Now more than ever you must treat your health as your most valuable asset and resist the temptation to outsource it to pseudoscience. Read, question, think for yourself. Refuse everything unless it is rooted in sound evidence-based guidance. And we must hold our representatives accountable for what’s happening at HHS.

The polio vaccine came along after my Uncle contracted the virus. The science wasn’t available to save him. It can save us, but only if we defend it.