Why does Trump want to halt progress in the fight against cancer, infectious diseases, food contamination and more?
The illegal firings of thousands of employees across Health
and Human Services’ (HHS) 13 divisions, the freezing of government contracts,
attacks on universities, and cuts to billions in research dollars will have
profound effects on our health and well-being, economic competitiveness, and
standing as a world leader in science.
And the wrecking ball has just begun swinging. HHS is slated
to shed 20,000 employees, or one-quarter of its dedicated workforce, and see its
budget cut by 26%.
A disdain for independent science and expertise is seemingly
a root cause of the actions. As Sudip Parikh, chief executive officer of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science and executive
publisher, Science journals said at this year’s annual meeting
in Boston, “Science and engineering and medicine are searches for truth, facts,
and objectivity. We live in a time when that seems under threat, and we need to
be able to say that.”
To his point, a May 23 Executive Order puts science under the control of politicians by giving
presidential appointees broad latitude to police scientific research and
conduct and punish alleged violations of its Orwellian “Gold Standard Science.”
Robert F. Kennedy
Jr., the secretary of HHS, has already acted on the EO by firing the entire
advisory committee that helps guide vaccine policy for the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC). Seventeen highly qualified, evidence-based
physicians and researchers, many with decades of expertise, are to be replaced
with individuals aligned with Kennedy’s anti-vaccination ideology.
The president’s appointment of Kennedy, a lawyer with no
scientific training, to lead the HHS is itself an attack on expertise and
truth. In four short months, Kennedy has made ill-informed decisions from
announcing a change in Covid-19 vaccine policy without notifying the CDC,
to offering a Florida sanctuary for Canadian ostriches
exposed to bird flu, to ending the development of a vaccine for the H5N1
virus, even as researchers demonstrate its ability to rapidly spread
through airborne transmission.
Science is clearly taking a backseat to grandstanding, and
the consequences could be deadly.
At its best, the demolition of our public health and research institutions shows an indifference to the pain and suffering that may fall on Americans when the agencies that keep our food safe, water clean, and protect us from deadly diseases are kneecapped. At its worst, the dismantling of federal agencies like the CDC, the NIH, and the Food and Drug Administration is cruelly calculated to hurt those most vulnerable in our society—the poor, the disabled, and the elderly.
Americans are already sicker and die younger in comparison
with other wealthy nations, according to a 2024 report by the Commonwealth Fund. Life expectancy is
4.1 years shorter in the U.S. compared with our peer nations, and maternal
mortality, for instance, is more than three times higher than in Europe. The Trump
administration’s attacks on science and medicine will only worsen these gaps.
Lawsuits challenging the legality of the administration’s
executive orders are moving through the court system, but we do not yet know
how all of this will play out.
Already the damages are taking a toll, with NIH being
especially hard hit. With an annual budget of $47 billion, the NIH is the
world’s largest public funder of biomedical research and development. It’s no
coincidence that the world’s leading medical labs are located in the U.S., or
that our research benefits people across the globe.
The Trump administration plans to cut NIH’s budget by $18
billion, or about 40%, and to consolidate its 27 institutes and centers into
just eight. At least 2,100 NIH research grants have been terminated thus
far, totaling $9.5 billion.
With at least 1,200 staff laid off all at once, and
thousands more voluntarily resigning, the loss of institutional knowledge and
medical expertise is staggering. The full extent of the brain drain is unknown
because NIH Director Jayanta Bhattacharya has yet to report the total number of staff losses.
One of NIH’s critical roles is to fund the basic science
research that underpins development of drugs and therapeutics, long before the
private sector takes an interest. Companies take that basic science and further
develop and commercialize vaccines, drugs, and therapies that save lives.
Funding for the grants that the NIH provides these labs, universities, and
institutions has largely
been frozen for the past month, as part of the administration’s war on
universities, even though a federal judge ordered a release of the money.
Billions of biomedical research dollars allocated to Harvard, Cornell,
Northwestern, Brown, Columbia, and Princeton are being withheld.
The agency has reportedly stopped vetting future studies on
cancer, Alzheimer’s, heart disease, and other illnesses and slashed the
programs for cancer and Alzheimer’s research.
The Trump administration also cut the overhead rate that NIH
pays to research universities to keep the lights on, computers running, and lab
equipment maintained from between 40% and 70% to 15%. Such deep cuts will lead
to even more layoffs, and research could grind to a halt.
While a U.S. District Court ruled the change was “arbitrary and capricious,” it’s unclear whether the
Trump administration will reverse the policy.
Halting research will have profound impacts on the American
health system and on our health.
It will disrupt local economies and hurt our overall
competitiveness. Every dollar that NIH spends on research generates more than
two dollars in economic activity, not to mention the patents and biomedical
startups that ensue.
Some U.S. universities are reducing or halting their PhD
admissions as a consequence. Doctoral students—our scientific future—are
watching their dreams die.
“Many are right now questioning the viability of being a
scientist in the U.S. going forward,” Carole Labonne, developmental and stem
cell biologist at Northwestern University, said in a PBS interview. We could see a brain drain in
the U.S., as young scientists choose a different career path or choose another
country in which to build their career.
And NIH is but one federal agency that the Trump
administration is taking a chain saw to. Cuts at the Food and Drug
Administration could have immediate impacts on our food safety, at a time when
food contamination outbreaks are on the rise. Staff with technical expertise in
nutrition, infant formula, and food safety response have been cut.
Similarly, at the CDC, staff cuts and contract freezes are
coming at a time when the nation is experiencing an H5N1 outbreak in poultry and dairy cattle that may well
lead to another pandemic, an unprecedented spread of measles in 33 states, and a tuberculosis outbreak in Kansas. The CDC plays a vital
role, working with states and communities to understand where disease is, how
to prevent it, and how to react. Simply put, we are losing people on the front
lines of keeping people healthy.
Tim Whitehouse is the executive director for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).
