It's time to enhance your scientific literacy. The Trump administration is not going to help you.
The following comes from American Prospect on 01/23/25:
President Trump, as part of sweeping changes to the federal bureaucracy, has imposed unprecedented harsh restrictions on the National Institutes of Health. All travel has been canceled, ruining many important conferences. All agency communications have been banned until further notice, blocking a highly anticipated report on the festering avian flu outbreak that has killed millions of birds, and could cause another pandemic if it mutates to enable human-to-human transmission. Worst of all, all study sections, which are required to disburse NIH’s $40 billion in grants—supporting some 300,000 working scientists at thousands of universities—are also halted indefinitely.
These decisions may be reversed, but damage is already accumulating fast, and the outlook is bleak.
The NIH is arguably the premier institution of medical research in the world. Founded in 1887, its scientists and grant programs have advanced countless groundbreaking discoveries, like the structure of DNA, chemotherapy, and the mRNA vaccine. NIH scientist Barney Graham designed the core of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine over a single weekend. Its scientists and grants have supported work that has won 174 Nobel Prizes and counting; most recently the chemist David Baker in 2024.
In short, NIH is the kind of thing that used to be recognized as central to both American prosperity and geopolitical influence. The social and strategic benefits to owning such an immensely successful research complex are immense. Even Trump in his first term did not meddle that much with the agency.
But in his second term, Trump stands at the head of a rising tide of vengeful, crackbrained irrationalism that might well end American scientific pre-eminence. Witness Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his nominee to run NIH’s parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services—a delusional, paranoid anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist. It would be hard to imagine a worse person for the job. This nomination by itself could conceivably cause a bird flu pandemic.
It wouldn’t be the first time a country lobotomized itself in a fit of pique. Before 1933, Germany was the clear world leader in academic research and achievement, winning far more Nobel Prizes than any other country. Hitler and the Nazis blew that up in a crusade against liberalism and "Jewish science," driving most top researchers across Europe (like Albert Einstein) to Britain or the U.S., where many of them worked on the Manhattan Project. German science never recovered fully. –Ryan Cooper
Editor’s note: The majority of American voters have enabled Donald Trump and his staff and contributors to do great harm to America and the world when they voted for him to be the US President in 2024 election. Who are these people and did they know what they were doing? Some did and some didn’t know what the consequences would be of their vote. Trump’s withdrawal of the US from the WHO and his freezing funds at the NIH for medical research will have lasting affects on the health of Americans for decades.
The US underperformed other developed countries in managing the COVID epidemic in the first Trump administration and Trump’s current decisions don’t bode much better for the future.
What can the average American do about this? Support public health programs and research at your state and county level and support your favorite medical research universities and organizations. Above all else support the scientists and students who live in your communities and regions. Be aware of disinformation and snake oil sales people. If there ever was a time for people to bone up on their scientific literacy it would be during the next four years.