The evisceration by the Trump administration of federal agencies which protects our health and our environment is a full attack against the science which will retreat our nation for years, even decades to come.
The illegal layoffs of thousands of employees in the divisions of health and social services (HHS) 13, freezing of government contracts, attacks on universities and billions of dollars in research will have profound effects on our health and well-being, economic competitiveness and the presence of world leader in science.
And the demolition ball has just started to swing. HHS should lose 20,000 employees, or a quarter of his dedicated workforce and see his budget cut by 26%.
At worst, the dismantling of federal agencies such as the CDC, the NIH and the Food and Drug Administration is cruelly calculated to harm the most vulnerable in our society – the poor, the disabled and the elderly.
A disdain for independent science and expertise is apparently a deep cause of actions. As Sudip Parikh, Chief Executive Officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Executive Publisher, Science The journals declared during this year’s annual meeting in Boston, “science and engineering and medicine are research of truth, facts and objectivity. We live in a time when it seems threatened, and we must be able to say it. ”
To his point, a May 23 Executive decree putting Science under the control of politicians By giving people appointed presidential people a great latitude to the scientific research of the police and the conduct and the punishment of alleged violations of his “science of golden standards” Orwellian.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., The secretary in HHS, has already acted on the ECE in dismissing the entire consulting committee which helps to guide the policy of vaccines for centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Seventeen doctors and highly qualified and researchers based on evidence, many of which have decades of expertise, must be replaced by individuals aligned with the anti-vaccination ideology of Kennedy.
The appointment by the president of Kennedy, a lawyer without scientific training, to direct the HHS is in itself an attack on expertise and the truth. In four months, Kennedy has made badly informed decisions by announcing a change in COVVI-19 vaccine policy without notification of the CDC, to Offer a Florida sanctuary for Canadian ostriches exposed to bird flu, put an end to development of a vaccine for the H5N1 virus, even if the researchers demonstrate its ability to spread quickly through airborne transmission.
Science clearly takes a rear seat for greatness, and the consequences could be fatal.
To its best, the demolition of our public health and research institutions shows an indifference to pain and suffering that can come across Americans when agencies that keep our foods safe, clean water and protect us from fatal diseases are knees. At worst, the dismantling of federal agencies such as the CDC, the NIH and the Food and Drug Administration is cruelly calculated to harm the most vulnerable in our society – the poor, the disabled and the elderly.
The Americans are already more sick and die younger compared to other rich nations, according to a 2024 report by the Commonwealth Fund. Life expectancy is 4.1 years shorter in the United States compared to our peer countries, and maternal mortality, for example, is more than Three times higher than in Europe. The Trump administration attacks against science and medicine will only increase these shortcomings.
The proceedings contesting the legality of the administration’s decrees move in the judicial system, but we do not yet know how it will take place.
Damage is already wreaking havoc, the NIH being particularly affected. With an annual budget of $ 47 billion, the NIH is the largest public funder in the world of biomedical research and development. It is not a coincidence that the main medical laboratories in the world are located in the United States or that our research benefits people around the world.
The Trump administration plans to reduce the NIH budget by $ 18 billion, around 40%, and consolidate its 27 institutes and focuses on eight. At least 2,100 research subsidies NIH have been terminated so far, totaling $ 9.5 billion.
With at least 1,200 employees dismissed both and thousands of people more voluntarily, loss of institutional knowledge and medical expertise is amazing. The complete extent of brain flight is unknown because the director of NIH Jayanta Bhattacharya again to report The total number of personnel losses.
One of the essential roles of NIH is to finance fundamental scientific research underlying the development of drugs and therapies, long before the private sector was interested. Companies take this fundamental science and develop and market the vaccines, drugs and therapies that save lives more. The financing of subsidies that the NIH provides these laboratories, universities and institutions Widely frozen since last monthsAs part of the War of the Administration against Universities, even if a federal judge ordered the release of money. Billions of dollars of biomedical research allocated to Harvard, Cornell, Northwestern, Brown, Columbia and Princeton are refused.
The agency would have ceased to verify future studies on cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, heart disease and other diseases and reduced cancer and research programs in Alzheimer.
The Trump administration has also reduced the general costs that the NIH pays for research universities to maintain lights, computers on the move and laboratory equipment maintained between 40% and 70% to 15%. Such deep cuts will cause even more layoffs, and research could stop.
While an American district court judged that the change was “arbitrary and capricious, “ We do not know if the Trump administration will reverse politics.
Research stops will have deep impacts on the American health system and on our health.
He will disrupt local savings and will harm our global competitiveness. Each dollar that the NIH spends for research generates more than two dollars in economic activity, not to mention patents and biomedical startups that ensue.
Certain American universities reduce or interrupt their doctoral admissions accordingly. Doctoral students – Our scientific future – look at their dreams die.
“Many are currently questioning the viability of being a scientific in the United States in the future,” said Carole Labonne, development biologist and stem cells at the Northwestern University, in a Pbs interview. We could see a brain flight in the United States, because young scientists choose a different career path or choose another country in which to build their career.
And the NIH is only one federal agency that the Trump administration takes a chain saw. Food and Drug Administration cuts could have immediate impacts on our food security, at a time when food contamination epidemics are increasing. Staff with technical nutrition expertise, in preparation for infants and in response to food security has been cut.
Likewise, at the CDC, the staff cuts and the contract gels arrive at a time when the nation knows an H5N1 epidemic in poultry and dairy cattle that may well lead to Another pandemican unprecedented propagation of measles in 33 states, and a tuberculosis epidemic in kansas. The CDC plays a vital role, working with states and communities to understand where the disease is, how to prevent it and how to react. In other words, we lose people on the front line to keep people healthy.