Promoting Science and Technology for the People

Over 1 billion children each year are traumatized by abuse, neglect, and other forms of early-life stress.

Early-life stress, however, is one of the most potent risk factors for depression and other neuropsychiatric disorders later in life. What’s more, childhood trauma has been shown to predict poorer response to antidepressant treatment and lower chances of remission of depression among patients.

In my Ph.D. research with Dr. Catherine Pena’s lab at Princeton University, I asked the question: What is the link between childhood trauma and resistance to typical antidepressant treatments in the brain? I hypothesize that early-life stress changes gene expression patterns in the part of the brain’s reward circuitry. To test this hypothesis, I link brain expression changes genome-wide, meaning all the genes of an individual, with depression-like behaviors after early-life stress.

While my research is ongoing, I already have so many other questions. Take for example the children of millions of Filipinos who are unemployed in the Philippines or forced to migrate to find work abroad because of low wages, unemployment, and poverty in the PH – do they face a particular form of childhood trauma or early-life stress and probably require particularized treatment later in life?

How about childhood trauma in the aftermath of COVID-19 and ongoing climate crises? Under current systems of, say, capitalist and imperialist forces across the globe, children from oppressed and exploited populations such as the working class, or even entire semi-colonies and colonies, are pretty much left for dead. They bear the brunt of massive delays and disorganized distribution of vaccinations, among so many other issues.

All this to say is just how important it is to produce and distribute science that serves the interest of the masses. Scientists are in the best position to advocate for the people when it comes to equipping science and technology that meets people’s basic needs, from food and water to employment and vaccines.

How then do we promote science and technology for the people? Stay tuned for more!