The administration forced the crucial scientific activity to stop. This is an act of national suicide.
Donald Trump meets Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on stage during the campaign’s Desert Diamond Arena event in Glendale, Arizona on August 23, 2024.
(Tom Braren/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Even before President Trump was inaugurated for a second term, it was clear that his approach to health care policy would be spectacularly disruptive. His nominees for key health posts were either unqualified or so mired in conspiracy theories about issues from vaccines to Covid that it was hard to see how the choices had any redeeming virtues.
Some of our more trusted health writers like Emily Auster and Rachel Bedard in The New York Timeseither Leana wins in Washington Pillarreassuringly waxed on the not-so-homely qualities of RFK JR and invented a fantasy world where we could all join hands and work together on some issues. It won’t surprise you to learn that I disagree. Instead, I think about a poem by Ann Saxon:
But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters, they want to know what tools to use.
They never ask why to build.
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Once you see that the Trump administration is headed our way toward collective self-government, you can stop asking about motives and focus on what tools will be brought to bear on this single vision to destroy itself.
Which brings me to the early days of the Trump administration. If you wanted to destroy public health in America, the Trumpistas are off to a good start — even without defunct lunatics like RFK Jr. officially in office.
First, the key messages of federal medical institutions are now under tightening. Information is the lifeblood of the work we do in healthcare. Now we see Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports (MMWR) – where the first news about potential health threats is published – offline. The CDC’s closed-door briefing for public health officials on H5N1 was also canceled.
Trump hit the communications pause button in his first term as well, but this version is much more expansive, with more agencies caught in the net. It is possible a change MMWR reports and other CDC communications on Covid in 2020 according to his political needs. Wait for RFK Jr.’s big red pen.
On Wednesday, panicked social media messages began to appear from researchers across the country. Research Sections—the peer review panels that choose which grants to recommend for funding at the National Institutes of Health— was canceled Without warning, putting the flow of research dollars in limbo.
Most Americans probably don’t know this, but so much of what we take for granted when we seek care in the U.S. — drugs, diagnoses, procedures — came out of NIH research. The development of new drugs and new vaccines relies on this agency like no other. Even a short pause like this puts the money in danger of running out, given the large role NIH plays in funding biomedical research. I raise 75 percent of my salary every year from NIH grants, and I’m at one of the richest institutions in the world.
Funding gaps can interrupt important research, and some may not recover. People could even lose their jobs – all panitorizations are not automatically filled for NIH when things go wrong. Meanwhile, researchers at the NIH were barred from making scientific presentations, even those planned well in advance. There were also NIH-sponsored trainings and conferences disassembled.
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These moves are desperately capricious and stupid, but the stakes couldn’t be higher. An image of a child at the controls of a nuclear reactor comes to mind, randomly poking at buttons with his short, cheeky fingers. The health and well-being of Americans hangs in the balance and could go up in smoke.
These are the first steps to destroy the American public health, Biomedicine and Science As we know it. Ras sits atop the Office of Management and Budgetthrowing out these decrees like a horseshoe aimed directly at the head of the most important parts of the federal government. “Like carpenters, they want to know what tools. They never ask why to build.”
This is day five of this administration and we should be in for a long haul. Running around in a panic. We need to organize. Some have suggested that resignation rather than resistance is the hallmark of our new era we have ushered in Vichy Americawhere we roll cigarettes, sip espresso at the bar and moan about our plight but mostly capitulate and watch Trump’s troops march from Sang Freud It would give Henri -Philippe Péton a run for his money.
Sorry, but I will not be complicit in acts of national suicide, and neither should you. Scientists and clinicians, despite criticism thrown out during Covid for being “too political”, are usually focused on their research and caring for their patients. But it’s time to step up people. Choose your battle. For me, this is about health care, biomedicine, and health care in America, and I will fight as long as I can.
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