Trump’s Budget Calls for Deep Cuts to Public Health Programs and Research
Read the full article in New York Times
President Trump used his budget blueprint on Friday to forge ahead with his assault on the nation’s public health and biomedical research enterprise, proposing draconian cuts to the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that experts warned would upend decades of progress in advancing human health, well-being and longevity.
In hard numbers and biting words, the budget wipes out a string of programs, including one that helps low-income people living in cold climates pay heating bills. It eliminates C.D.C. programs devoted to preventing chronic disease and injuries, including gun violence injuries, dismissing those programs as “duplicative” and “unnecessary.”
It calls the N.I.H., the world’s premier biomedical research agency, “too big and unfocused.” The document argues that the institutes have “broken the trust of the American people,” while effectively accusing the agency of funding research that led to the coronavirus pandemic. It says the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal agency that provides health care to more than 160 million Americans, has carried out “wasteful and woke activities.”
In some respects, the plan is not surprising; Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has already announced that he is shrinking the federal Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the N.I.H. and the C.D.C., by 20,000 people. The blueprint proposes $500 million for Mr. Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again initiative.
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Mary Woolley, the longtime chief executive officer of Research America, an advocacy group that promotes biomedical research, said the effects of Mr. Trump’s proposal would be felt over the long term by slowing studies that could lead to treatments for a range of diseases, including childhood cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and Lupus, the chronic autoimmune disease.
But she also said there would be short-term effects. Patients are already losing access to experimental drugs because clinical trials have been shut down as a result of recent budget cuts, she said. She worried that young researchers would conclude that “they have no future in this country and should look elsewhere.” Some are already being recruited by countries, including China, she said, adding, “If you don’t have the next generation, you have nothing.”
Polls show that most Americans support biomedical research. A recent survey by KFF found that a majority of the public, 61 percent, opposed major cuts to staff and spending at federal health agencies. There were stark differences along party lines, with 9 out of 10 Democrats opposing the cuts, and 72 percent of Republicans supporting them.
Ms. Woolley cited a recent report by United for Medical Research, a coalition of patients, advocacy groups, industry and academic medical institutions, that found N.I.H.-funded research is an economic engine, returning $2.56 for every $1 invested.
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