“Please, just go to your doctor. Stop coming to me for medical advice.”

Molly Kiley is a third-year biochemistry major at UW-Milwaukee. She told Lauren Breunig how the pandemic changed her relationship with science and her plans for the future.

(Lauren Breunig) What drew you to studying biochemistry?

(Molly Kiley) So ever since I was little, every like two or three years, someone that I’ve known has been diagnosed with cancer. It started about when I was like six years old. My mom’s dad was diagnosed with stage four leukemia. And then a period about six months, he was already gone. I remember really having this like, theme of death constantly and people passing away and going so far as to having like a collection of wake dresses. The news never got better. And I grew up in a Catholic background, where no one really taught me science. When I was younger, I kind of had to do my own research. And I figured out like, “Oh, shit, this news is terrible. Obviously, it’s never going away. I can’t let this keep happening. I need to do something to fix it.”

(Breunig) How did the biochemist in you—your “science brain” as you call it—react to the pandemic?

(Kiley) Science brain is so tired that it’s become a social phenomenon. And by social phenomena, I mean an opinion-based phenomenon. Something that I want to address first, that I feel like speaks for the magnitude of this situation. My dad works HR for this company, which is an essential business.  So, I worked there over the summer, and I worked there over the winter. And a lot of people know that I’m going into cancer research, so they would ask me questions. A lot of people there are not as up to date on what’s happening with COVID.

(Breunig) What kind of questions did they ask you because of your science background?

(Kiley) A lot of them came to me for advice about the vaccine. And trying to explain what the vaccine does, and trying to explain what the virus does, but not going to their doctor to explain that information. And that really just broke my heart. Because I don’t even have my full bachelor’s degree yet, like I could be wrong. The fact that you’re trusting me, your coworker instead of your doctor was really frustrating.

(Breunig) Can you tell me more about why this reliance on your knowledge bothered you?

(Kiley) Why don’t you trust your doctors to get advice on the vaccine, you know? It’s only because this has become such a such a social mediatized issue. That all of a sudden, you’re not trusting people that went to school for like 13 years. And then people were turned back at that and say, well, I don’t trust my doctor. I’m like, then why is that your doctor? You should trust your doctor first and foremost.  I’m someone that wholly believes in science, and I don’t really have any doubts just because I’ve dealt with a lot of deaths in my life and a lot of disease. So, knowing that these people work so hard, and that they study their asses off because I’m in the beginning stages of that sort of career. It was wholly frustrating.

(Breunig) How did that experience change your relationship with science, if it at all?

(Kiley) My friends joke at me and they say, “If you go far enough, you could go work at the CDC.” Before COVID, I thought about it. But holy shit after this, I do not want to work there at all. We know the current political climate in the United States, and having such a factual governing body changed so much based on political bias and political opinion, changing those facts. It just doesn’t make sense how fact can change like that. So, it felt very much like my science brain was spitting out all these facts, but the facts were being shot down by opinion, op-eds, and political theory and economics. And it’s like, no, these are facts; this is how it factually works.

(Breunig) How does this frustration affect your plans for the future?

(Kiley) A light went on, saying, “This is what I don’t want to do.” I’m very glad I wasn’t in research during the pandemic, because I couldn’t deal with all of that stress. Everyone says, oh, why don’t we have the vaccine sooner when you can sequence it very easily. Researchers knew the sequence very, very early. There wasn’t a problem of the science behind it; it was a problem of manufacturing it. The researchers still knew how to do their jobs.

(Breunig) What’s something you want people, especially the people who have reached out to you with questions, to know about the pandemic?

(Kiley) Trust your doctor. If you don’t trust your doctor, get another doctor. Because that person, frankly decides if you live or if you die. There is so much intricacy in your body but you can’t understand all of it. Even when I start researching. I’m not even gonna be a doctor. I know that there’s a situation of people not affording health care and a lot of people not being in an area where there are good doctors, but that’s something that’s on the US government to control, not me. Go to your doctor—please just go to your doctor. Stop coming to me for medical advice.