In all the time I’ve been a scientist I never worried about American science until the last month.
Even during the first Trump administration, while there were challenges, I felt like things would generally be okay. Research continued. One of my daughters and I went to the Science March in 2017 in Sacramento. We bumped into a few of my medical students here at UC Davis Medical School.
There were worries, but not like now.
Attacks on American science intensify: from NIH scientist, “We’re fucked”
It’s an odd feeling today to be sensing now that American science is in deep trouble under Trump 2.0. There’s also no clear hope of things getting better for years to come.
It has been a rough week after three other terrible weeks. Thousands of federal scientists have been fired or laid off for no good reason. It has become clear that the NIH is unable to issue almost any new grants under the new administration and is at least $1B behind in funding research already in 2025.
Remarkably, the stodgy journal Nature quoted an anonymous NIH science officer on Thursday this way: “We’re fucked.” It’s an extreme statement but accurate. It’s also how many scientists across the country feel right now.
Keep in mind that if American biomedical science is screwed, then America in general is also screwed.
Why?
Fewer medical and other scientific discoveries
The public needs to know the consequences including the reality that there will be fewer new treatments for them and their loved ones in the future because science is under attack.
With RFK Jr. at the helm of HHS, I also expect that we’ll see the FDA approving “treatments” that just aren’t helpful but do pose risks to the public. Kennedy seems to like things like unproven stem cells and a host of iffy peptides.
These impacts mean power health for Americans.
Biomedical science is also a huge job creator.
Unless something radically changes for the better, probably tens or hundreds of thousands of scientists at universities and biotechs across the U.S. will be losing their jobs in 2025. Institutions will be unable to hire thousands more to keep science going. Biomedical research centers will also take fewer graduate students because there’s just no money. It’s already happening.
Then there are mass firings and cuts to other areas of science like NSF, with national security implications.
Overall, it’s a case of America shooting itself in the foot. There’s no sense to it. Keeping amazing American science going is something that people of all political parties can agree upon so it’s a mystery to me how there haven’t been more challenges to this self-destructive policy approach in part driven by an unchained Elon Musk.
Maybe efforts to push back will get going. There will be a national science march/protest the first week of March.
More regenerative reads
- Scientists grew human-like teeth in pigs. Could it lead to living tooth replacements?NPR. Stem cell-based tooth replacement is one of the most exciting areas of regenerative medicine. See: Lessons from sharks: how we might grow new teeth via stem cells
- The Erasing of American Science, The Atlantic (via Yahoo). A look at recent events in science like those discussed earlier. What’s your go-to analogy for what’s happening to science? Eraser? Blowtorch? Nuke?
- Neural stem cell transplant improves outcomes for chronic ischemic stroke at 12 months, Healios. It’s been a dozen years or more that we’ve been hearing about encouraging but small studies on stem cells for stroke. It’s an idea that should work for at least some partial recovery but just hasn’t had much progress so far.
I guess there was some sort of global conspiracy by tens of THOUSANDS of scientists and physicians from literally around the world regarding COVID-19, treatments, protocols, etc. Yeah, sure.
Professor Knoepfler is being VERY kind however I’ll just say it plain and simple.
Literally tens of millions of people in the United States are simply too DUMB, IGNORANT and/or BRAINWASHED to see the truth or wanting to understand the truth. Many of these people haven’t even taken a high school science class, let alone a college biology class. Yet after watching a few ill-informed videos, they think they know something about science and medicine, and then they spew asinine tripe.
It’s like me with taking civics class in high school and then trying to defend a legal case in front of the Supreme Court..LOL!
I never realized how bad it was until COVID-19 and now with POTUS-47.
It’s quite sad actually.
In this Professor’s opinion. Whom I am willing to bet is a liberal. Had “scientists” not lied to us about Covid among other things, scientists would have the support of the American people. From what I have seen and witnessed these “scientists” are easily influenced by big pharma. Yes there are some that aren’t but the government and big pharma silenced them. Censorship during Covid is a major reason scientists have lost the support. They have no one to blame but themselves. Being honest should have been top priority but it wasn’t. PS We are all sick of liberals blaming Trump and now Musk for everything. Oh and the gloom and doom IS NOT WORKING ANYMORE.
@Patty Sue,
All the medical care you and your family have ever gotten have 100% depended on medical science. Same for me and everyone else.
Medicine doesn’t happen without a healthy system of biomedical research.
Moving forward new treatments for all of us regardless of our political views are just not going to be as good because of the decisions being made.
That’s bad for all of us.
These are almost entirely non-controversial things like new cancer treatments, new antibiotics, new treatments for MS, Alzheimer’s, etc., finding alternatives to opioids…
Then maybe you should not be blaming Trump RFK Jr or Musk as if it is their fault. No Covid BS was all Biden. You are the one who made it political. I know for a fact that dr’s were threatened if they praised Hydroxychloquine as working AFTER Trump touted it as working. Threatened with losing their Medicare and Medicaid patients. Cardiologist were prescribing it and it was working. Also dr’s are forced to prescribe only one drug for patients over 65 who have covid and at $1500-$1600 a pop they are still banking and they being the insurance companies and ding ding big pharma PFIZER!! And I can’t believe as a scientist that you still believe there is no cure for cancer. 🤦🏽♀️. There is no money to be if they ever find a cure. My friend was murdered during Covid by them putting him on a ventilator and remesdir the other hospital put their Covid patients on the Covid cocktail. Guess which hospital patients survived. It was NOT the ventilator patients. You are a liberal professor who hates Trump and it shows. You people make me sick.
I’m not hating on Musk or Trump. I’m focused on what I see as their harmful actions against science and medicine. There’s a difference. I’m sorry you lost your friend during Covid and I wish you the best even with your “you people” comment, which does suggest you have a lot of hate and anger or at least probably wrong assumptions.
Hate and anger? No sweetie that would be y’all. I can’t count the times liberals have wished me death for having a different opinion than theirs. You made it political not me. YOUR OPINION is different than ones that support Trump and RFK JR. You need to re-read what you wrote yours sounds hateful and extremely politically motivated.
Just one more thing. Trump and RFK are not scientists. They have never done experiments in a lab. They cannot tell you anything about how a drug or therapy works, and they don’t know how therapies are developed. You’ll need scientists for that.
Dr. Knoepfler, you deserve a medal for your measured responses to this person. You’re doing much better than I would. Nothing I would say in response to them would be anything that could be posted here. Clearly no amount of facts or rational thinking will ever get through to them, but you are doing a great job of being rational anyway. And somewhere, Darwin is saying shhh…. I got this.
@Inga, I feel like here in the US these days it’s important to put in extra effort to be polite and try to have conversations especially with people who have very different views.
Sweetie what I STATED are facts. Things I witnessed firsthand. And to let you in on a little secret you would have met your match with me. Because what I would respond to your response that could not be posted here would be much worse. Someone who thinks Harris is the greatest is NOT the sharpest tool in the shed. Good luck darling cause YOU are going to need it. 😊Bless your little heart ❤️
Scientists do tend to be liberal, because progress is our job. We are working for the future of better therapies for currently untreatable disorders. Academic scientists aren’t usually connected at all with big pharma. Some get funding from pharma in return for pharma’s first rights of refusal to the results of their work. Others are directly contracted to perform assays for a pharma company. We tend to accept funding when it doesn’t interfere with our real work, which is to have ideas, experiment, and share our results.
Here’s an example: CAR-T therapy for blood cancers. The idea of harnessing our own immune systems to kill blood cancers originated in an academic research lab. Once it had been proved to be promising, it was necessary to call on pharma companies, with their much better funding and clinical expertise, to turn the idea into a therapy. Ask your AI provider “how many people have been treated successfully with CAR-T since 2017?”
But CAR-T doesn’t work very well at all on cancers that involve other organs, not the blood. So there is a tremendous need for research: the government-funded research done in academic labs.
Pharma companies don’t want to spend their money on new ideas and experimental research, so they almost always rely on academic researchers to have the ideas and do experiments that show that the therapy might work.
When I have time, I’m happy to answer questions or suggest people who can answer them if it’s not something I know a lot about.