1 day Ago By Courtenay Harris Bond
Nora Newcombe, a psychology and neuroscience professor at Temple University, was one of more than 50 local researchers, doctors and scientists who signed a letter published Monday demanding that the Trump administration "cease its wholesale assault on U.S. science.
" "For over 80 years, wise investments by the US government have built up the nation's research enterprise, making it the envy of the world," the open letter said. "Astoundingly, the Trump administration is destabilizing this enterprise by gutting funding for research, firing thousands of scientists, removing public access to scientific data, and pressuring researchers to alter or abandon their work on ideological grounds." All of the nearly 2,000 signatories were members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.
In addition to Newcombe, there were other signers from Temple as well as from Thomas Jefferson University and many from the University of Pennsylvania. Newcombe described the inception of the letter as a "groundswell" among a handful of members who began circulating it, carefully circumnavigating official channels related to the National Academies since it is chartered by the U.S.
government and many of the reports it produces are requested by the federal government. People who signed it did so as individuals, the letter said. It is possible the letter did not reach all of the more than 6,000 members of the academies and that there may have been many more signers if it had, Newcombe said.
"Almost 2,000 is not too shabby, but I'm not sure it's exhaustive," Newcombe said. "..
. I don't think you can find anyone who's serious about science, medicine or engineering – those are the three national academies – who isn't devastated by what's happening." Last week, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F.
Kennedy Jr. took to YouTube to announce plans to "streamline" HHS by reducing the workforce from 82,000 to 62,000 employees and by eliminating an "entire alphabet soup of departments and agencies," making 28 divisions 15 under the Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA, plan. On Tuesday, workers at HHS began receiving notices that they were being laid off as part of Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency's plans to overhaul the agency.
The Associated Press reported last week that the cuts will include: • 3,500 jobs at the Food and Drug Administration, which inspects and sets safety standards for medications, medical devices and foods. • 2,400 jobs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which monitors for infectious disease outbreaks and works with public health agencies nationwide. • 1,200 jobs at the National Institutes of Health, the world’s leading public health research arm.
• 300 jobs at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees the Affordable Care Act marketplace, Medicare and Medicaid Hundreds of millions of dollars of funding cuts to the National Institutes of Health, a division of HHS, will impact, in part, research relating to heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer's disease. The federal government has also cancelled grants related to HIV prevention , youth suicide and other areas, many of which are related to LGBTQ+ health. The Trump administration has also threatened to cut funding to hospitals that offer gender-affirming care.
Funding for research into the health effects of climate change , vaccine hesitancy and health disparities are also getting the axe. "You just don't redo things with that kind of speed," Newcombe said. ".
.. I don't think anyone would say that everything was as efficient, as wonderful as it could be, but it takes a very long time to carefully change things.
" More than $300 million in funding to the Pennsylvania Department of Health and at least $28 million to the Pennsylvania Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs is also getting slashed, according to notices the federal government began sending to state health departments last week. "The Pennsylvania Department of Health is currently reviewing the information received from the CDC and is assessing the potential impacts on programs and services for the people of Pennsylvania," a state health department spokesperson said in an email Thursday, declining to comment further. Monday's letter said: "We hold diverse political beliefs, but we are united as researchers in wanting to protect independent scientific inquiry.
We are sending this SOS to sound a clear warning: the nation's scientific enterprise is being decimated," noting a "climate of fear" that "has descended on the research community." Newcombe said that despite this fear, she feels strongly that people need to keep talking about how the government is gutting science. "People need to understand that if they want cures in the future, or competent people managing, God forbid, another pandemic, this can't happen," Newcombe said.
"...
Even now, coming back from just the two-plus months of devastation would be difficult.".
