Science is being murdered in the USA, and we know who is doing it

You should know that the National Institutes of Health was the largest supporter of biomedical research in the world. It was huge. It wasn’t just a gigantic research complex located in Bethesda, it administered the funding for most of the biological research in the country.

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. … 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. … RFK needs to go and by impeachment if necessary. … 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?