Within hours of the US government shutdown taking effect, a major conference in Perth last week was an unlikely victim of the American fiscal crisis, with Parkinson’s disease expert – and former researcher at La Trobe University – Michael Lazarou being prevented from giving a keynote address.
Dr Lazarou, who works in the biochemistry department of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Washington, travelled to Perth to present his findings at the ComBio science conference.
With his long-planned speech just hours away, he was advised that he was forbidden to go ahead with it.
“Almost a total of 30 hours travel time to come to Perth and I got some emails from the NIH alerting me that I’m no longer allowed to present my work because the government has shut down,” Dr Lazarou told reporters on the day.
“I didn’t quite believe it. I had prepared for such a long time to come here and give this talk, all that effort and it goes to waste now.”
Dr Lazarou was told that if he continued to attend the conference as a delegate, his actions would constitute a US federal offence.
More than 800,000 US government workers went on unpaid leave after the shutdown came into effect, with the US Congress failing to approve a new budget in opposition to the Affordable Care Act proposed by President Obama, otherwise known as Obamacare.
Dr Lazarou told media he was stunned by his employer’s instructions.
“To be honest, I thought ‘this isn’t real’, I didn’t quite believe it,” he said.
“I had prepared for such a long time to come here and give this talk, and all that effort has gone to waste.”
He says other delegates were bemused by his situation.
“This is one person, but there are thousands of scientists in the United States at the moment who can’t continue their research and many of these people are doing important research in many different fields,” he said.
On 17 October the US Government will exhaust its legal borrowing capacity and run out of money unless an agreement is reached between President Obama and the Republican-controlled Congress.