THE Trump administration cuts In health research, will shorten life expectancy and threaten the lives of all Americans, according to the leaders and scientists of university unions.
Laboratory chiefs and researchers said they already saw doctoral students who are not admitted, delayed or canceled research, and longtime colleagues have been dismissed while President Donald Trump executes his discounts promised to public spending .
American taxpayers finance around $ 81 billion in academic scientific research and development each year, more than double the highest country, according to the International Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
A group of universities last week won a temporary prohibition prescription blocking the National Federal Health Institutes to put an end to part of the funding, but scientists and union leaders say that the impacts are still felt by losses jobs, canceled scientific journals and delayed fundamental research. How much was cut or interrupted is uncertain. The Trump administration has not published full and reliable accounting of job cuts or financing purposes.
“They are once again making America sick,” said Professor Todd Wolfson of Rutgers University, president of the American Association of University Professors. “They will have drastic effects on us all. It is not a hyperbole. It is a fact.”
Speaking to journalists Thursday alongside a group of researchers and other union leaders, Wolfson said that discounts will have inexpressible implications for generations. Funding has been suspended because it mentions “diversity” or “climate change”, while in other cases, federal counterparts have ceased to communicate or make meeting notices which are not assigned to the Federal Register.
The impacts are felt in communities across the country with universities or university medical centers, said Wolfson and others, as well as clinical training, fundamental scientific research and patient care.
Margaret Cook, a union leader for American communications workers who represent around 130,000 members in health care and education, said the public should understand what is at stake.
“It’s so much bigger than what we do in our individual clinic …” said Cook.
Annika Barber, who does research on the circadian rhythms of fruit flies, said that fundamental research like hers helps to “fill the pipeline” scientific knowledge, allowing scientists of 20 years to develop treatments for things like Traumatic brain lesions, which affect soldiers as well as the large number of older Americans who fall into their homes.
Barber, assistant professor at Rutgers, said that his best friend recently died of cancer at 38, and noted that it is research on fruit flies that have revealed how genetic mutations cause cancer.
“There are so many other discoveries that we have to make,” said Barber. “What will clinicians go in in 20 years?”
She also fears that her students and colleagues move to other countries where funding is more stable, in what will be a “long-term loss for the United States”.
Many university researchers are deeply skeptical or critical of the new secretary for health and social services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who before joining the administration campaigned for the president on a platform of “Make America Health “. Traditional researchers say Kennedy’s long -standing opposition to scientifically developed vaccines, for example, are likely to harm public health, not to improve it.
“Leaving the American good scientific very dry by cutting fundamental research and talents will not make America again healthy,” said Barber. “It will only make us sick with each passing day.”