The NIH is headquartered on this sprawling 300-acre campus in Bethesda, Maryland. It’s home to the largest clinical research hospital in the world, and 27 research institutes and centers.
The “leaked” budget draft includes a plan to consolidate those 27 institutes and centers into eight and eliminate four, including the Institutes on Nursing Research and Minority Health.
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But Collins says the bulk of that budget, more than 80%, goes to researchers off campus.Dr. Francis Collins: Most of that goes out to the universities and institutes all over the country. They’re the ones that do the work, but they get the funds from NIH by writing very compelling grant applications that go through the most rigorous peer review system in the world.
Some of those researchers’ work lines America’s medicine cabinets, such as statins, antidepressants, and new forms of insulin.
A Journal of the American Medical Association study found that between 2010 and 2019, 99% of FDA-approved drugs had ties to research funded by the NIH.
Dr. Francis Collins: Every dollar that NIH gave out in 2024 to a grant is estimated to have returned $2.46 just in a year. That’s a pretty darn good return on investment.
I was careful to use the past tense up there, because right now it’s being rapidly dismembered, dismantled, and disemboweled, in a savage act of intentional vandalism. This is like Egypt blowing up the pyramids, or Italy bulldozing the Vatican, or France deciding the Louvre would be a great storage facility for outflow from a sewage treatment plant. If America were to be remembered by history for one great accomplishment, it would be the scientific productivity established here, and an institution modeled by other countries around the world. And it’s being willfully destroyed by a gang of incompetent know-nothings.
NIH insider: I’ve never seen the morale of an institution or any place change so abruptly to where we feel fear.
It began, he says, in February, when more than a thousand probationary employees were placed on leave.
Sharyn Alfonsi: When that happened, that first hit, what was the reaction, like immediately and in the office the next Monday?
NIH insider: Tears. Everybody trying to assess damage, who’s been fired, who hasn’t been fired, what do we do? And then an immediate sort of assessment– in the clinical center: “Okay, can we still take care of patients and our research participants? Is it still safe?”
Sharyn Alfonsi: No one thought before they fired the people that dealt with the patients that maybe they shouldn’t be fired?
NIH insider: This didn’t come from within NIH, it came from outside, they don’t know what these people do.
As DOGE dismantled parts of the agency, employees told us work on child cancer therapies, dementia, and stroke slowed or stopped because critical lab and support staff were let go.
Imagine the burning of the library of Alexandria — we will look back on this moment as something entirely equivalent. This is not something you can rebuild in a few years with a supportive congress and a bunch of money. Those people are leaving. They’re emigrating or looking for career alternatives. They’re knee-capping universities.
NIH insider: This doesn’t feel like a strategic plan to reorganize and make the NIH better and more efficient. It feels like a wrecking ball.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Typically, when a company has layoffs they talk about restructuring. There’ll be a new structure and this is how it’s gonna work. Is there a structure in place right now for the NIH?
NIH insider: Not that anybody’s shared. We have no idea. You know making the organization better, everybody is for that . There is no question. But again– this is not more efficient. It is infinitely less efficient right now because you can’t get anything done.
The confusion in Bethesda has also paralyzed many of the 2,500 universities and institutes that rely on the NIH to help fund their research.
So far, nearly 800 grants have been terminated- some on HIV and AIDS, trans health and COVID-19 after researchers were told their work was no longer an agency priority.
And last week, the NIH signaled that more cuts could be coming. It announced that any university with a DEI program or that boycotts an Israeli company might not be awarded new NIH grants for medical research and that existing grants could be terminated.
It’s catastrophic. And what’s amazing is that we can pin it directly on one man, Donald Trump, who has put vandals and morons in charge of what should be America’s pride. In particular, he’s put Rat FucKer jr in charge of HHS, which oversees the NIH. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, and what he thinks he knows is all wrong.
If you need a little humor (I don’t, I think it’s time to seriously charge forward and battle these assholes) to stomach the bad news, here’s John Oliver. The best bit in this segment where RatFucker jr just confidently and stupidly makes up figures, claiming, for instance, that 50% of the people in China are diabetic. Nothing the RatFucker says can be trusted — he’s a liar, a con man, and a snake oil salesman.
The conclusion is also good.
Secretary Kennedy is a danger to the public’s health and should resign or be fired.
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RFK needs to go and by impeachment if necessary.
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This is a man who is clearly in way over his worm-riddled head. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, he doesn’t know who he’s fired, he doesn’t even know how many diabetic people there are in China. And if that wasn’t enough, he’s currently spreading dangerous nonsense and gutting life-saving research all while bringing in a basement quack.
Yeah. But by impeachment? Congress approved RFK jr’s appointment, despite knowing everything that Oliver pointed out, so who believes we can trust them to act responsibly now?
You can put it even more simply.
They are destroying the future of the USA.
Science has been the driving force for our civilization in general and the USA in particular.
It explains our leading position in the world.
It will take a while since the USA is a big place with a lot of momentum. But in a generation, the USA will be a has been. A once great nation reduced to stagnation and failure.
I’ve posted the data for my assertion that science was the leading driver for the USA and its economy probably a dozen times by now.
I’ll post it again because the truth hasn’t changed.
There is a link to the original article in Science, which is a general article written for a general audience. You can read it yourself.
Importance of science to the USA
Once again, it is time to point out that science is the leading driver of our civilization and responsible for the USA’s leading (don’t laugh, it was true up until a week ago) position in the world.
Attacking science is like attacking your own feet and hands. It is national self harm.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.342.6160.817
What’s So Special About Science (And How Much Should We Spend on It?)
WILLIAM H. PRESS
SCIENCE 15 Nov 2013
Yet investments in basic research are variously estimated as ultimately returning between 20% and 60% per year (13).
I suppose it is time once again to dust off an old study on how science is the main driver of our society.
.1. US GDP per capital has increased about 9-fold in the last century.
.2. 85% of this increase is explained by advances in science.
Our lead in science Research and Development funding explains our lead in the world in terms of the world’s largest economy and…largest military. The military is well aware of the value of science and has a good incentive for spending money on research and development. Better weapons means fewer soldiers dying in battles.
The world’s leading nations all spend relatively high levels of their GDP on science, about 3%.
Spending on science is estimated to yield a ROI of 20-60%.
If we stopped spending public money on science, in the short term nothing would happen.
The payoffs from science can be short term but most are long term.
In the long term, we would just fall further and further behind the rest of the world.
This is the tl;dr version of the point I’m making above.
.1. US GDP per capita has increased about 9-fold in the last century.
This can only happen if productivity per worker increases 9-fold.
If you just increase the number of workers, the GDP goes up but GDP per worker remains the same.
85% of this increase is due to advances in science and technology.
.2. Spending on science is estimated to yield a ROI of 20-60% per year.
.3. The world’s leading nations all spend relatively high levels of their GDP on science, about 3%.
This is a correlation but it is also causal.
The USA leads the world in science, medicine, and the economy because it spends the highest amounts of GDP on science and technology.
The christofascists, the GOP, and Trump have destroyed the future of the USA for no obvious reason.
They also benefit from advances in science and medicine.
Science offers them more money, a better life, and a longer and healthier life. Which they have just declined in favor of mindless destruction.
I was just reading Fred Hoyle’s ‘Ossian’s Run’. Eire has become the world’s leading economic superpower because of a highly secretive firm called Industrial Corporation Eire. One of the directors points out that they have diverted twenty percent of GDP to scientific research compared to the USA’s thirtieth of one percent which I suspect was true of America in 1959. Didn’t I hear that the US spent more on sports and entertainment the scientific research?
Of course, its not just health that is suffering – no being kjilled, murdered by Trump here. NASA & the U.S. National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration (NOAA) are falling victimto Trump & his puppeteeers Science Denailism and willful ending of Scientific progress here too. See for just one recent example here :
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2025/04/03/infinite-thread-xxxv/comment-page-3/#comment-2263178
@ 1-3 raven
*applause*
Consistently the best commenter on Pharyngula.
When Julius Caesar burnt the Library of Alexandria, it was an unintended consequence of his naval tactics. The Trumpists are deliberately burning down the entire research structure of the US.
@ ^ chrislawson : Reminds me a bit of .. now, was it the Tang or Ming Dynasty Chinese empire burning the ships of exploration (Zheng He’s) and shutting down contact with the West or the Tokugawa Shogunate deciding to isolate ancient Japan from the rest of the world to keep control of their country indefinitely and avoid foreign contact that might change their society and their hold on power?
Possibly some gross oversimplifications there sorry and possibly me being mistaken here but still what’scoming tomy mind reading this FWIW.
Just another example: Kevin Hall Leaving NIH, Cites Food Addiction Narratives. Kevin Hall has done innovative work in the area of obesity research. Pretty crucial for making America healthy. But this time his findings disagreed with the narrative desired by JFK Jr et al. Turns out the evidence doesn’t support ultra-processed being literally addictive. So Hall was forbidden to interview with the New York Times about the paper, was only allowed to answer written questions, and then his replies were altered without his permission.
This kind of conduct will not make anyone healthier.
This is straight out of the tyrant’s playbook.
They’re going after, not just science, but also education generally, the press and, these days, bloggers and youtubers who do any kind of fact-checking. And note that they’re also going after high-ranking military officers who care about facts because they think it’s important to know what the hell they’re doing. These are not separate instances; they’re all connected to the single goal of getting rid of all publicly available sources of knowledge to keep the subjects ignorant.
The problem is that removing him now isn’t going to fix anything. Look up the current line of succession. It’s all Trump-Loyalist Republicans and Brainworm Jr.
@10 – billseymour
I would like to add the Judiciary to your list of things.
@1 They are destroying the present as well. Measles, whooping cough and tuberculosis are all making a comeback in the US.
You know, the things that our science and medical programs fixed.
Given the cultists’ propensity for letting their kids die from completely preventable diseases, I’m not so sure there will be a next generation, at least not in the MAGA cult. (Or the dipshit orthodox and ultra-left antivaxxer idiots either.) I dunno about the meek inheriting the earth but the vaccinated offspring’s odds keep going up every day.
I can’t figure out why not vaccinating your kids is not considered child abuse. Neglect (especially the kind that leads to permanent disability or death) is one kind of child abuse.
Oh yeah, let’s not forget the racist forced-birthers who are so worried about declining (white) birthrates are busy killing off and sterilizing the next generation. (Measles causes male sterility/infertility due to the extremely high fever that is one of its hallmarks. Female sterility/infertility is less common from measles but it can still happen.) If anyone in the parade of fools currently occupying Capitol Hill had any actual scientific/medical knowledge, you’d think that they would have worked that out by now.
When the time comes, I hope the surviving kids put their aged parents in the crappiest third-rate nursing homes they can find.
@11 Cheetolini’s hand-picked idiots aren’t anyone else’s picks. If Cheetolini goes, the cult of personality collapses, mostly because none of the immediate followers have the charisma to keep it going. The couch-fucker can’t even human properly, there’s pretty much zero chance that the cult will recoalesce around him. Ratfucker is despised by his own (extremely political) family and anyone who isn’t a cultist and MAGA female politicians have the viability timeframe comparable to McDonald’s french fries.
I’m pretty sure that the cult will die when the shitbrindle orange turd does but the damage he’s doing will last for generations.
stuffin @12: yes, there’s lots of really bad shit that Trump and his minions are doing; but I was thinking only of the goal of keeping the populace ignorant. There’s also the goal of keeping us divided and fighting among ourselves, which I think is what all the racists stuff is about. Going after the judiciary could well be just Trump’s desire for retribution for not declaring that he won in 2020 and for continuing to limit his personal power.
silvrhalide @14: I think Trump is the symptom, not the disease. I agree that the world would be a better place without him; but I think Akira MacKenzie is right, not just because of the immediate line of succession, but also because of the underlying problem, the oligarchs’s lust for money and power.
Also, “…MAGA female politicians have the viability timeframe comparable to McDonald’s french fries.” That’s clearly English, but I can’t figure out what it means.
@15 McDonald’s french fries are awful. (Most fast food is.) McDonald’s fries smell better than they taste and they are really only tasty for about 30 seconds, when they are fresh and hot. They get soggy pretty quickly, so if you order and eat them (not recommended) you really have to do it in the 30 seconds or so that they are viable.
MAGA women, especially politicians, all go in thinking they are going to be the queen bee not realizing that 30 seconds after they arrive, they are already yesterday’s lunch. Can you name one female Trump supporter from his first administration that came out ahead or was rewarded for their abject, sycophantic bootlicking? Kellyanne Conway is now divorced, unemployable and her kid hates her. I’m sure Cassidy Hutchinson has regrets. MTG is a risible caricature for Trump and it got her nothing, definitely not the Cabinet position she was angling for. Even Ivanka is keeping her distance. MAGA women haven’t worked out that MAGA men hate ALL women, not just the leftist ones.
https://www.salon.com/2025/02/26/a-woman-is-like-a-child-maga-quickly-turns-its-sights-on-stripping-women-of-power/
Respectfully, I disagree. The oligarchs lust for power was always there, even during Dubya & Obama’s terms in office but Trump was the backdoor vulnerability that the oligarchs exploited to trash the system. Cut out Cheetolini and the exploit is ended, because there is no more mindless obedience to the cult leader. Sure, the rot still permeates the system (Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas are Exhibit A) but without Trump, there was a limit to the damage they could do.
I disagree. DT is a symptom, not a cause. If it wasn’t him it would have been someone else. The USA has been on this trajectory for a while in the worship of merit/expertise being defined by the size of your bank account. It’s capitalism unrestrained by morality. If you make money, you can poison the water, the air, and the land then make everyone else pay for the cleanup. An uninformed opinion counts just as much as an informed one. One anecdote cancels out 50 years of data. Media that has no fact checking and a public addicted to the easy explanation. Casino stock markets and insider trading. Vulture hedge funds and massive payouts for failing CEOs. DT can go bankrupt 5 times and get bailed out, but a student can never get their student debts forgiven.
The best explanation I have seen is that most people are just angry, and are happy to take it out on, well pretty much everyone else.
if anyone wondered how trump bankrupted 2 casinos, an airline, a university or any of the other businesses he has started and folded look no further he is demonstrating all of his talent and genius in this first 100 days. and we are all going down together into what ever this mess will become.
I have wondered for a while just where did The Vicker or any of the other apologists go and why they have not come and given us their interpretation of these events.
fear depression and anger are cycling through my head everyday.
@8. ” Reminds me a bit of .. now, was it the Tang or Ming Dynasty Chinese empire burning the ships of exploration (Zheng He’s) and shutting down contact with the West or the Tokugawa Shogunate deciding to isolate ancient Japan from the rest of the world to keep control of their country indefinitely and avoid foreign contact that might change their society and their hold on power?”
Ming dynasty on checking today :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ming_dynasty
Also from Zheng He’s wikipage :
Plus also a factor :
Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_He#Legacy
Oh and, yes, also the Tokugawa Shogunate too :
Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokugawa_shogunate
Thsoe ae what Iwa sthinking of there but also the isolationists globally generally.
This is like Egypt blowing up the pyramids, or Italy bulldozing the Vatican, or France deciding the Louvre would be a great storage facility for outflow from a sewage treatment plant.
It’s more like Mao’s “cultural revolution”, or at least the beginning stages of it.
As O’Brien says in 1984, “how do you show that you control someone?”
“You
Make them suffer.”