On a spring day in 2006, I woke up from surgery to learn that I had an aggressive type of breast cancer that would require chemotherapy.

I had been told I had a relatively benign diagnosis that was supposed to be cured by a mastectomy. It was devastating to realize that the surgery was not the end of it. I was a cancer patient. This was real.

But there was good news, too: a clinical trial had recently demonstrated the effectiveness of a particular drug, Herceptin, for early-stage cancers of this same aggressive subtype. Herceptin was an antibody designed to target the HER2 protein that had gone rogue in my cancer cells. It was perhaps the earliest example of precision medicine: a new vision of healthcare tailored to the genes, environment, and lifestyle of each individual.

After eight sickening weeks of conventional chemotherapy and a year of Herceptin infusions, I was done with treatment. After five cancer-free years, the doctors declared me cured.

I may well owe my life to these drugs. Adding Herceptin treatment to chemotherapy is estimated to improve chances of survival in cases like mine by about a third.

But it was not “science” in the abstract that threw me a lifeline. Scientists did—people working hard, making sacrifices, struggling with funding and broken equipment and the hundreds of other daily challenges of research.

Taxing graduate training

Knowing the kind of dedication such advances take is why it was so disheartening when, the week before Thanksgiving, the House of Representatives approved a tax bill that if it became law would end the career of countless scientists and throttle scientific progress in the process.

Their proposal would artificially inflate the taxable income of grad students, increasing their tax bills by up to 400%. This would make advanced training inaccessible to many promising students, unless they happened to be wealthy.

Thankfully, the Senate did not include the plan to tax tuition waivers in their version of the bill. But in fighting this disastrous proposal, students, faculty and other advocates have been forced to spend a frustrating few weeks defending graduate education.

From the lab to the clinic

We have been asked why the public should care about whether or not grad students get to pursue their research dreams. One answer is that graduate training is vital to science and innovation in this country.

Consider Herceptin, the drug that helped me.

One of the keys to Herceptin’s success as a drug was that the original mouse antibody designed to target HER2 was subsequently made safe for use humans—if physicians had injected me with the mouse version of the antibody, my body’s immune response would have recognized the foreign protein as an invader and mounted an attack.

To get around this, Genentech, the biotech company that developed Herceptin, “humanized” the antibody by replacing 95% of the protein with the human equivalents. They were successful in this innovation in part thanks to the expertise of Paul Carter, fresh from his graduate school training in the laboratory of Greg Winter at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK. Winter’s group had been the first to successfully humanize mouse antibodies.

Examples like this are more than commonplace; public investment in research training has long been crucial for the survival of the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. After all, scientists first learn how to be scientists in graduate school.

In fact, many such industries were born from academic research. Genentech was the first company to successfully use genetic engineering to create a drug (recombinant human insulin). The company was co-founded by an academic researcher and its early success was built largely on discoveries made in Bay Area university labs in the 1970s. And of course, on discoveries made by graduate students.

For example, in 1971, UCSF graduate student Robert Yoshimori isolated an enzyme from a clinical sample of E. coli bacteria. This new enzyme, named EcoRI, cut DNA only at the site of specific sequences. Another graduate student, Janet Mertz at Stanford, discovered that the cut DNA ends were “sticky”—which meant that they could be easily joined with any other DNA molecule cut by EcoRI. These discoveries revealed a simple and fast method to unite DNA from different sources into one combined molecule—a pivotal moment in the widespread adoption of recombinant DNA methods, and the technology that brought us Herceptin.

You see, grad students make contributions to science as part of their training. It’s one of the criteria for graduating from most PhD programs. If grad students are taxed out of existence, not only is the future scientific workforce weakened, but the many discoveries those students would have made during their training are hindered, or worse, lost.

Not all grad students remain researchers. Even fewer will remain in academia. But grad school training is vital preparation for many careers that make a difference to society. Even once Herceptin was developed, countless PhD-trained scientists were needed to shepherd the drug through the long process of bringing the drug to market. These patent lawyers, clinical trial coordinators, statisticians, FDA evaluators, regulatory writers, and many others may not fit your picture of a cancer scientist, but nevertheless, they were essential to making this drug an option for patients like me.

Potential losses beyond measure

I received my diagnosis just before Herceptin was approved by the FDA for use in early-stage cases. I would have missed out had the development and testing of the drug been slowed by staff shortages. I may have lost my life if this process had been delayed because the best people for the job had never become scientists at all.

As the Dean of a graduate school, I have daily opportunities to witness the creativity and dedication of grad students—and not just in my own field of biomedical science. Tracing their contributions to a particular innovation or product is in many ways an impossible thought experiment, because without PhD training, there are no researchers. If grad students are priced out of this system, the research enterprise will suffer immeasurable losses. Higher education will suffer. Industry will suffer. The economy will suffer. Ultimately, everyone will suffer—including those who will miss out on lifesaving medical treatments.

How you can make a difference now

What can we do to safeguard graduate education? There is still time to call your representatives while they reconcile the House and Senate bills. Ask them to ensure that the final act retains provision 117(d)(5) that makes student tuition waivers non-taxable. Ask them to retain other protections that make college more accessible, including keeping employee tuition benefits as non-taxable and allowing student loan interest to be tax deductible.  Contribute your story to our awareness campaign. Tell your family and friends about the importance of research and graduate training. Tell the grad students you know that you value them and their many contributions. And don’t stop keeping an eye to their future, because it just might impact yours.

Three weeks into my term as GSA’s President I went to the Women’s March in New York with my daughters. The experience was energizing and uplifting on many levels—it was completely peaceful, attended by women and men of all ages, and focused entirely on affirming civil rights. The magic of the day came from the surprisingly massive participation around the world and the realization that people with all kinds of backgrounds and beliefs can be roused to action in the face of threats to basic civil liberties. As for many, many people, this was my first march, and it brought the realization that we do have the power to influence our political leaders.

When I heard about the March for Science shortly after the Women’s March, I worried about the risk of being labeled as a “special interest” group complaining about funding. Would we be able to capture the attention of a similarly broad swath of our population? I and our Executive Committee quickly became convinced our Society must support this movement as an official partner of March for Science. Although the GSA is nonpartisan, we cannot be apolitical; our responsibilities to our community and the public who fund our research are too important. As custodians of public funds and a research enterprise that ultimately serves society, we have a responsibility to communicate to the policymakers and the public our deep concern about the future of science and the status of scientific evidence under the current administration.

Political acts are of course not new for GSA and other scientific societies. We have long represented genetic researchers in advocacy efforts—whether aimed at federal agencies, policymakers, or the public. What may seem new about our support for the March for Science is that this movement started as a response to the current administration. And although the March for Science organization itself is nonpartisan, it’s clear that most of the people marching will be protesting against actions of the current administration.

Anti-science actions and rhetoric are not exclusive to one political party. But the first actions of the new administration signal both a disturbing attitude about the merits of scientific evidence in making policy decisions, as well as an intention to dismantle this country’s research capacity. President Trump has appointed an EPA Administrator who does not believe the overwhelming scientific evidence that carbon dioxide emissions cause climate change. Trump is pushing to appoint a “vaccine safety commission” that would legitimize the discredited anti-vaccination movement that costs lives. The President’s budget proposal would decimate funding for science research, including disastrous cuts to the EPA and the NIH.

I cannot stand idly on the sidelines as the legitimacy of scientific evidence is undermined as a foundation for sound governance. I cannot stand by as our capacity to understand the world—and therefore to make it better—is crippled. Neither can the scientific community. Neither can the GSA.

So why march? Here are some of the reasons why we’re marching:

• Communicate to public and policymakers the extent of our concern.
• Shatter the illusion that nobody cares about research. In fact, the March for Science has gathered a lot of interest from the public.
• Show solidarity with the public who will be marching for science.
• Galvanize opposition and find common cause with other groups, even where we disagree on other issues.
• Affirm the need for greater inclusivity and diversity in science and research.
• Foster unity and inspire people to act rather than to despair.

Whether your vision for the future of this country is conservative or liberal or libertarian or progressive or none of the above—there’s a good chance you want science to make the world a better place. I hope you will join me in marching on April 22, whether in DC or in a location near you, to ensure science and scientists can continue to serve you.

Please share your reason for marching on Twitter and FaceBook using the hashtag #GSAmarches. For those joining the march in Washington DC this Saturday April 22, please register here to receive updates on the GSA meet-up point.