How will a Brexit scenario impact science?

Brexit may have finally overtaken myriad memes of Donald Trump’s hairpiece on our newsfeeds. For months, the EU referendum has loomed large in a collective public mind, bamboozled by potential impacts on everything from human rights to house prices. It is a political hot potato that when dropped on the 23rd June, could see us out on our ear in the cold, looking in through the window at the EU planning their Christmas party, wondering whether we have done the right thing.

But above the cacophony of multiple debates, what of Britain’s unassailable drivers of modern progress – science, healthcare, research? Enter Martin McKee, Professor of European Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Professor Angus Dalgleish, Foundation Chair of Oncology at St Georges University and Senior Advisor to the pro-leave lobby group ‘Scientists for Britain’, who have real problems agreeing.

As a champion of international health care, McKee’s extensive travel around the world engaging researchers and policy makers in neglected health issues has led The Lancet to comment that “even conversing with him is liable to cause jetlag”. I am inclined to agree as I conduct our conversation over email during his stopover between Mexico and Miami.

“Would the world class status of our institutions falter without the backing of the EU? Yes”, he says. And the biggest threat to research? “The difficulties we would face in engaging with European networks, […], the difficulty with exchanges of staff, exclusion from EU science advisory committees, […], we should also not ignore the inevitable cut to science funding”.

McKee is right – the EU has brought us undeniable rewards. UK universities are huge beneficiaries of its research grants – (Imperial received £48.8m in funding in 2014), 200,000 UK students and 20,000 UK staff have been able to work or study in Europe under the Erasmus scheme, our NHS is part-staffed by skilled non-British EU workers and cross-country clinical trials for rare diseases have been coordinated where small disease population sizes are a real issue. But it is far from perfect, with problems many and manifest and questions about anti-democratic behaviour lingering. While this needs to be considered, in leaving, McKee argues, there is a real risk that we would continue to contribute to the EU from outside while relinquishing our place at the negotiation table.

Dalgleish, on the other hand, holds less complimentary views of the EU, labelling it a “sclerotic”, “dying organisation” that is heading for a “headlong crash into a wall”. He regards the views of the remain campaign as “unnecessary scaremongering” and feels Britain will continue to thrive, regardless of the “completely and utterly doomed EU”.

“There will be hardly any difference at all in the practical day to day science [we experience in Britain]” he says, asserting that our position on the world stage is secured – “Britain is far bigger than the EU in science”. He is more concerned by the impact of remaining on our NHS, particularly in light of recent trade discussions and TTIP proposal between the US and the EU – “It’s black and white […] either you have the EU or you have the NHS but you can’t have both”.

A report published this week by Lord Darzi, Director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College and the London School of Economics, addresses some of these concerns, and it is well worth reading. Amongst other suggestions, it claims that both the EU and member states will be able to agree TTIP reservation clauses for national health services, helping secure against privatisation. “The core principle of the NHS”, the report comments, “will continue to be defined by UK government whether we remain in, or leave, the EU”.

“I find it inexplicable that even a handful of scientists in the UK can support Brexit”, say McKee, “initially I just assumed [it] was a lack of awareness of the issues, their misconceptions, such as those on the Clinical Trials Regulation, have now been pointed out numerous times yet they persist in repeating them. It must now be clear that they simply make up 'facts' to fit their arguments, with a complete disregard for the truth. Sadly, you have to fact check everything they say. Even where there is a grain of truth it is hardly never the whole truth, and almost always years out of date”.

And so the clock ticks and we edge further towards the deadline. As an unprecedented event, can our predictions about what will happen to science, research and the NHS be anything more than noisy rhetoric amidst largely speculative debate? That said, hilarious as they are, memes of Donald Trump’s hair should remind us of how close a nation could come to making a decision with far reaching ramifications.

“We are taking a leap in the dark”, says McKee, “I’m sure we could salvage something [should we leave], but it will clearly be much worse than what we have already”.