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Health expert calls Trump’s medical research cuts “reckless destruction”

Health expert calls Trump’s medical research cuts “reckless destruction”



Health expert calls Trump’s medical research cuts “reckless destruction”

02:25

The National Institutes of Health is the world’s largest source of funding for medical research. It has also undergone huge budget cuts in recent weeks imposed by the Trump administration, which prompts thoughts from Dr. Timothy Johnson, long-time ABC News medical editor and founding editor of the Harvard Medical School Health Letter:

Over the course of my long career in medical journalism, I had the great privilege of getting to know many of the leading medical researchers in this country. They were typically people of great integrity who had dedicated themselves to the often-frustrating and tedious task of painstaking research to find new cures and preventions for important medical problems. And the bottom line for many of them was that, without government support, they could never have achieved the discoveries that have helped us all.

Which is why I am stunned by a recent report that states the Trump administration’s National Institutes of Health has stopped payments on grants totaling more than $1.8 billion for nearly 700 specific medical research projects.   

This sledgehammer approach will cause terrible damage to many outstanding research programs, and it will destroy the careers of many young medical scientists just starting their research. These are dedicated people who have already put in many years of difficult training and may be on the cusp of some major discoveries.

Demonstrators protest against the Trump administration’s cuts to funding for medical research, healthcare, and education during a “Kill The Cuts” protest in New York, April 8, 2025.

Adam Gray/Bloomberg via Getty Images


And I believe it is possible that many of these suddenly-defunded researchers will find positions in other welcoming countries – a “brain drain” in reverse from the flow of many scientists into this country during and after World War II.

So, why aren’t more politicians insisting on a more surgical approach that would find legitimate savings without potentially destroying the research infrastructure that has served our country so well for decades?

Put simply, we are facing a choice between smart decisions or reckless destruction that may affect our nation’s health for generations to come.

And if I may use a sophisticated medical term, it seems to me that the right choice is a “no-brainer.”

       
Story produced by Liza Monasebian. Editor: Carol Ross. 

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Biden’s “Cancer Moonshot” hit by Trump’s cuts to research at Harvard and Columbia

Steep cuts to federal medical research grants this year have now disrupted millions in awards once backed by former President Joe Biden’s “Cancer Moonshot” initiative, after the Trump administration froze funding to Columbia University and Harvard University over their handling of campus protests about the war in Gaza.

Biden revealed Sunday he has been diagnosed with an “aggressive form” of prostate cancer. His “Moonshot” initiative was already personal because his son Beau died of brain cancer. 

Multiple cancer scientists at Harvard University say they have seen their National Institutes of Health funding evaporate in recent weeks due to the funding freeze.

“We are not allowed to charge anything on these grants and I understand that Harvard hasn’t been reimbursed for any charges to these grants for at least 30 days,” Joan Brugge, professor of cell biology at Harvard Medical School, told CBS News in an email. 

Brugge said the university had informed her that her research into mutations linked to breast cancer, as well as studying the recurrence of ovarian cancer, was among some 350 federal grants terminated at Harvard Medical School.

Harvard bioengineering professor David Mooney said all cancer research funding from NIH’s National Cancer Institute for his team had also been cut off, including multiple grants to post-doctoral research fellows. 

The Trump administration also terminated millions awarded for developing anti-cancer immunity at the university’s immuno-engineering center, which was launched in 2020 as part of the “Cancer Moonshot” initiative. Mooney’s lab was the first to engineer an “implantable biomaterial cancer vaccine” to retrain the immune system to destroy cancer cells, the university says. 

“This will dramatically diminish our ability to make progress in developing cancer immunotherapies,” Mooney said in an email.

Under versions of the cancer initiative launched by Biden first as vice president in 2016 — and later rebooted in 2022 after he was elected president — the federal government poured more than $1 billion into a broad array of research, prevention and treatment projects. 

That money came largely from the 21st Century Cures Act passed by Congress in 2016, which went to more than 100 different institutions. It included millions awarded to support the work of cancer centers around the country.

That also included a long-running award to support the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center at Columbia University and New York-Presbyterian Hospital. Now federal records show the award to support Columbia’s cancer center has also been terminated.

“Anti-Semitism — like racism — is a spiritual and moral malady that sickens societies and kills people with lethalities comparable to history’s most deadly plagues,” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a March statement, announcing plans to look for cuts to Columbia’s funding.

The Trump administration has targeted universities for their handling of pro-Palestinian protests on campus, alleging they let antisemitism go unchecked, which the universities dispute. 

NIH records show the money at Columbia’s cancer center had gone to a broad array of projects, ranging from clinical studies to administrative costs. 

Beyond the Trump administration’s cuts to Columbia and Harvard, one other award directly linked to the Biden cancer initiative is also listed as terminated: a project funded at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute to “address cancer disparities among Indigenous sexual and gender minority populations” with films, outreach and illustrations.

Other projects funded by NIH’s National Cancer Institute have also had their funding canceled after officials deemed they ran afoul of other White House executive orders that took aim at topics like “gender ideology extremism” and “diversity, equity and inclusion” programs.

Support and communications staff at the cancer institute were also not spared in Kennedy and DOGE’s layoffs earlier this year.

Senate Democrats have criticized Kennedy and President Trump for cuts to NIH’s grants this year, which they said in a report amounts to at least $15.1 million in cancer funding lost. 

“Trump’s war on science is an attack against anyone who has ever loved someone with cancer,” Sen. Bernie Sanders said earlier this month.

Alexander Tin

Alexander Tin is a digital reporter for CBS News based in the Washington, D.C. bureau. He covers federal public health agencies.

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RFK Jr. told Congress no working scientists were fired, but these top NIH brain scientists are still facing job cuts

Some of the National Institutes of Health‘s top brain scientists received layoff notices last month, weeks before Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testified to Congress that no working scientists had been cut from his department.

While the researchers were asked to continue working for a few more weeks in the labs they run at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, multiple sources familiar with the situation say their layoff notices have not been revoked.

“Most people believe we were reinstated because we got back to the office,” one of the scientists, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told CBS News in a message.

This means they still face termination from the federal government on June 2, alongside the thousands of other workers who were put on leave after Kennedy’s layoffs were announced last month.

“These 11 labs have about 100 staff, mainly young trainees whose careers will be severely disrupted,” one scientist familiar with the situation told CBS News.

News of the Neurological Disorders and Stroke scientists losing their jobs was previously reported by The Transmitter. 

The laid-off scientists include Richard Youle. Youle, who has served at the NIH since 1978. He carries the title of distinguished investigator, a designation reserved for the agency’s most preeminent researchers. He was the winner of the $3 million Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences in 2021 for his research into Parkinson’s disease.

A scientist familiar with Youle’s work, who spoke anonymously fearing retaliation, praised his research as a “fundamentally important” breakthrough for the field. Youle’s results had paved the way for researchers to find new treatments for Parkinson’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders, the NIH said in its news release. 

One source at the NIH said Youle had received four job offers after news of the layoffs broke last month. Three were for positions outside the United States. While Youle has told others that he has no interest in leaving the U.S. for now, the source said it shows that “the world is ready to pounce and take our top scientists if we don’t fix this.”

Ten other senior investigators – Miguel Holmgren, Steve Jacobson, Dorian McGavern, Joseph Mindell, Katherine Roche, Zu-Hang Sheng, David R. Sibley, Kenton Swartz, Susan Wray and Ling-Gang Wu – were also laid off at NINDS, according to records shared with CBS News. A senior associate scientist at NINDS, Silvina Horowitz, got a layoff notice as well, the records show.

Among the scientists who have received major recognition for their work in recent years include Wu, who was selected for a prestigious award in February from the Biophysical Society for his ongoing research on how neurons communicate and function. Sibley was recognized in 2023 by a pharmacology society for “seminal contributions” to understanding dopamine receptors in the brain.

Kennedy had told a Senate health committee hearing on May 14 that the only cuts they had made to date were “administrative cuts.”

“As far as I know, we have not fired any working scientists, the working scientists, the people who are actually doing science. There are some people who were scientists that were doing IT or administration, who did lose their jobs. But in terms of working scientists, our policy was to make sure none of them were lost and that that research continues,” Kennedy said.

NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and senior leaders within the department were made aware weeks ago about the layoffs, multiple sources told CBS News. Bhattacharya and others previously said that they were mistakes and would be reversed soon.

Weeks have passed since those assurances were made to the scientists. Multiple sources said the scientists have yet to receive any letters revoking their “reduction in force” or “RIF” notices, or an explanation for why moves to reverse their layoffs never occurred.

That is unlike similar layoffs that were revoked weeks ago at the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by the department, which officials completed in the days ahead of Kennedy’s testimony to Capitol Hill. 

When asked about the employment status of NIH and NIOSH scientists who received reduction in forces notices, a spokesperson for the department pointed back to Kennedy’s remarks at the Senate hearing about the layoffs.

Kennedy’s claim that no working scientists were fired has drawn disdain in recent days from other laid-off scientists at multiple health agencies beyond the NIH. 

For example, while some of the laid-off employees at the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health were restored ahead of Kennedy’s hearing, researchers in the agency’s Health Effects Laboratory Division remain off the job. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also lost many scientists in its National Center for Environmental Health, which had been responsible for an array of work ranging from lead poisonings to to illness outbreaks on cruise ships. CDC labs investigating outbreaks of viral hepatitis and sexually transmitted diseases were also eliminated, after all the scientists were laid off.

“Perhaps he is unaware that his RIFs have gutted scientists and frontline public health workers at CDC, the very people he vowed to protect,” one laid-off CDC official told CBS News.  

Some within the NIH said they believed that the scientists would be reinstated after the research agency faced a second round of layoffs, which employees had been told were to compensate for scientists that needed to be reinstated to their positions. 

Around 200 employees at the NIH were laid off, including staff at the National Cancer Institute and Office of Research Facilities. Officials said the cuts wiped out multiple teams responsible for contracting work to conduct emergency maintenance around the NIH’s campuses and oversee laboratory safety. 

The NIH’s acquisitions office was also gutted by those layoffs, according to an email to lab managers shared with CBS News, leaving the agency’s supply center with “little to no capacity for new work” to obtain supplies for researchers.

Alexander Tin

Alexander Tin is a digital reporter for CBS News based in the Washington, D.C. bureau. He covers federal public health agencies.

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HHS moving to fire probationary employees again, officials say

The Department of Health and Human Services is moving for a second time to fire probationary employees at the nation’s health agencies, multiple federal officials said, after many previously had their terminations paused amid court battles over their fate.

In mid-February, thousands of recently hired or promoted workers at the department had received letters firing them, but those firings were temporarily reversed by multiple court orders. Many workers who did not leave for other jobs have been on paid leave since.

“This is nothing of a surprise. These probationary employees were previously told in February that their jobs were impacted. This is the final step of the process where they receive their final notice,” an HHS spokesperson said in a statement.

It was not immediately clear whether all or only some health agencies would be impacted by the renewed wave of firings.

Two people at the National Institutes of Health said they had received instructions this week to carry out the terminations. Two people at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said they also had also been informed of the renewed termination effort.

“It’s all just so awful. Especially given how chronically underfunded and understaffed things are at the best of times,” said one CDC official, who was not authorized to speak publicly.

Two people said that letters started being sent in the U.S. mail Thursday. One person said they were surprised about the urgency of the orders to fire the workers, which was accompanied by a demand for frequent updates on the progress of the mailings.

The February firings of probationary workers were done differently than the department-wide layoffs that have rocked the nation’s health agencies in recent weeks as part of a sweeping restructuring ordered by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Those February letters to probationary workers claimed that their firings were due to a finding that “you are not fit for continued employment because your ability, knowledge and skills do not fit the Agency’s current needs, and your performance has not been adequate to justify further employment at the Agency.”

Workers and supervisors were surprised by the claim, given some of the fired employees had recently received high performance ratings and were recruited to fill key vacancies.

“It is a sad, sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie,” U.S. District Judge William Alsup said in March.

In the months since, a handful of offices have been able to claw back their probationary workers by justifying their need to perform critical agency functions. Others have been working with probationary staff to start returning their equipment.

Alexander Tin

Alexander Tin is a digital reporter for CBS News based in the Washington, D.C. bureau. He covers federal public health agencies.

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NIH director pushes back timeline for RFK Jr.’s autism answers

The head of the National Institutes of Health now says it could take until next year to get preliminary results from their new studies into autism, marking the latest delay to findings that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had promised by September.

“We’re going to get hopefully grants out the door by the end of the summer,” NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya told reporters Tuesday. “And people will get to work. We’ll have a major conference, with updates, within the next year.” 

Bhattacharya said it should still be considered “a very rapid study by NIH’s normal standards,” saying that the institute was working to “cut the red tape without cutting the rigor” in launching their new research grants. 

“It’s hard to guarantee when science will make an advance. It depends on, you know, nature has its say,” Bhattacharya said.

Kennedy earlier this month pledged that “by September, we will know what has caused the autism epidemic, and we’ll be able to eliminate those exposures.” 

In an April 15 statement released by his department, Kennedy said “we expect to begin to have answers by September.”

“I would like to have a timeline within a year, where they start to put out the preliminary results or the results. We’ll see. It’s hard to predict how long scientists – you know, nature has its say in how long the results take,” Bhattacharya said.

He said he did not think there had been a miscommunication behind Kennedy’s September promise, saying Kennedy was simply “enthusiastic to get the scientific process going.”

“He’s accurately communicating that we want to get moving on this as rapidly as we can,” Bhattacharya said.

Researchers getting the awards would be selected through the NIH’s “normal process” of reviewing proposals from outside scientists, he said. Every institute at the NIH will be involved in the autism project.

Bhattacharya said they were still discussing exactly how much money to devote to the autism research effort, which he previously said would likely give out awards to between 10 to 20 groups. The sum is “on the order of tens of millions of dollars,” he said.

He also sought to address privacy concerns over the medical records that the NIH is amassing for the autism research project, which he said was at the “forefront of my mind.”

“The identifiers will be hidden from the researchers themselves. There will be systems in place where they can’t pull down the data and look at any individual patient. They’ll be looking at statistical aggregates,” he said.

Asked if Kennedy would have any say in who gets chosen to get access to the records and grant funding, he said it would be the agency’s peer reviewers making the picks.

“Secretary Kennedy has not ever, in my experience, put his thumb on the scale in that way. And nor do I intend to do that,” Bhattacharya said.

Advocacy groups have criticized Kennedy’s new push to study autism’s causes, with the nonprofit Autistic Self Advocacy Network pointing to “decades of time and billions of dollars that have already been spent on research to identify the causes of autism,” instead of what it says should be funding going towards supporting people with autism.

Alexander Tin

Alexander Tin is a digital reporter for CBS News based in the Washington, D.C. bureau. He covers federal public health agencies.

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Health agencies

A Department of Health and Human Services official said Friday that the health department is not creating an autism registry, contradicting an announcement made days ago by the director of the National Institutes of Health describing his plans to study causes of autism. 

“We are not creating an autism registry. The real-world data platform will link existing datasets to support research into causes of autism and insights into improved treatment strategies,” an official for the department told CBS News in an emailed statement.

The plans outlined by NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya to amass a broad swath of confidential health data, as part of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s autism research effort, have been the subject of intense criticism in recent days by advocacy groups and autism researchers.

Some providers diagnosing and treating people with autism have been deluged by requests to scrub their data and cancel appointments, multiple federal health officials told CBS News, over concerns about patient privacy and worries it would be used to support unfounded claims. 

News of the HHS reversal contradicting Bhattacharya was first reported by STAT News.

The NIH director previously said, as part of a presentation to a meeting of the agency’s outside advisers about the effort, that the NIH would be “developing national disease registries, including a new one for autism” to be integrated into a new “data platform” to study autism and other chronic diseases.

The HHS official did not say whether Bhattacharya initially misspoke or explain why his plan was reversed. Bhattacharya did not respond to a request for comment. HHS has not responded to a CBS News request for an interview with Bhattacharya about the registry.

Some $50 million will be invested in the research effort, which includes the data platform, the HHS official’s statement said, which is “aimed at understanding the causes of ASD [autism spectrum disorder] and improving treatments by leveraging large-scale data resources and fostering cross-sector collaboration.”

According to the official, the NIH still plans to explore partnerships with other federal agencies, including the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, “to facilitate a comprehensive real-world health dataset that maintains the highest standards of security and patient privacy while supporting research into autism and other areas such as chronic diseases.”

In a statement to CBS News, the NIH said its “secure data repository” would “analyze large-scale, de-identified data” for autism and chronic diseases, similar to the agency’s cancer database. The autism research would “be fully compliant” with federal privacy laws and regulations, the agency said.

“These efforts are not about tracking individuals. All NIH-managed databases follow the highest standards of security and privacy, with the protection of personal health information as a top priority,” the NIH said.

The HHS statement marks the latest change to Kennedy’s autism research effort in recent weeks, since he first announced the push at a White House meeting earlier this month.

Bhattacharya told reporters earlier this week that he anticipated grant funding for the autism research would “hopefully” be awarded by September. That is later than the initial timeline outlined by Kennedy, who has said that “by September, we will know what has caused the autism epidemic.”

“It’s hard to guarantee when science will make an advance. It depends on, you know, nature has its say,” Bhattacharya has said.

Alexander Tin

Alexander Tin is a digital reporter for CBS News based in the Washington, D.C. bureau. He covers federal public health agencies.

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National Institutes of Health lays off hundreds more staff, including at cancer research institute

The National Institutes of Health has laid off hundreds more staff, multiple current and laid-off employees of the health agency told CBS News, including at its cancer research institute.

Around 200 employees began receiving layoff notices Friday evening, said three people who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The move surprised NIH officials, since the department previously claimed no further cuts were planned at the agency. 

“We thought the worst was behind us, and we were transitioning into this new phase, and the rug was just pulled out from underneath us,” one laid-off employee said.

A spokesperson for the NIH did not comment on why NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya sought the additional layoffs, referring an inquiry to the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the NIH. An HHS spokesperson said that, after a review, the department had notified additional employees that they were “also impacted” by the layoffs plan announced in March. 

Fewer than 250 employees at the department received notices, the spokesperson said. An HHS official said that “the same number of employees will be brought back in critical areas” elsewhere at the department. 

Two people said they had been told that the second round of cuts was done as part of an effort to compensate for other scientists needing to be reinstated, in order to comply with layoff targets.

“The savings from these reductions will help redirect resources toward critical programs and strengthen our ability to serve the American people effectively. The goal is clear: reduce waste and maximize the impact of every taxpayer dollar,” the HHS spokesperson, Andrew Nixon, said in a statement.

Among the cuts on Friday were around 50 employees at the NIH’s National Cancer Institute, or NCI. They had worked in the institute’s Office of Communications and Public Liaison overseeing programs like the Cancer Information Service, which provides answers to doctors and patients about cancer, and updates to databases summarizing cancer information for healthcare providers. 

The layoff notices came a day after staff in that NCI communications office had met with top-ranking NIH leaders, to discuss drawing up plans to consolidate their staff into a new centralized communications arm across the agency. 

While several communications offices at the NIH’s institutes had been gutted during an initial round of layoffs on April 1, NCI’s team was spared. Around 150 staff at NCI had been laid off last month, two people said. The institute’s contracting and training staff were eliminated, and there were deep cuts to its human resources team.

“Leadership was in the process of transferring some process and some of our media relations people over to NIH, because they were still getting press inquiries, but they couldn’t handle the volume of inquiries that were coming through,” the laid-off employee said.

Alexander Tin

Alexander Tin is a digital reporter for CBS News based in the Washington, D.C. bureau. He covers federal public health agencies.

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HHS revokes some layoff notices, including to 9/11 program

The Department of Health and Human Services formally revoked some layoff notices on Tuesday, multiple federal health officials told CBS News, restoring some staff at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration.

Tuesday’s letters to laid-off workers notifying them that their employment was being restored went a step further from some previous reinstatements touted by department officials, which often amounted only to a request for civil servants to continue working for a few more weeks to wind down or prepare to hand off their assignments.

“You previously received a notice regarding the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) upcoming reduction in force (RIF). That notice is hereby revoked,” read the letter received by some workers at the World Trade Center Health Program, which provides health care services to 9/11 first responders and survivors.

At least a dozen employees of the World Trade Center Health Program were told that their layoff notices were revoked.

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A move last week to cut 15 employees of the 9/11 program, as part of a larger wave of eliminations that gutted most of the work from the CDC’s National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, or NIOSH, prompted outcry from New York lawmakers.  

In an interview with Fox News on Monday, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. denied cutting the World Trade Center Health Program or NIOSH, which he said are slated to be merged into a new agency called the Administration for a Healthy America.

“Those programs were not terminated, as the media has reported. But they’ve simply been consolidated into a place that makes more sense,” Kennedy said.

Some of the FDA’s laboratories also received notices Tuesday that they would be formally brought back to work as of Wednesday.

Employees of the FDA’s food safety labs in Chicago and San Francisco all received notices that their layoffs were being reversed, though cuts to probationary workers in the labs have so far not been walked back. 

Letters to those scientists told them that their previous layoff notices were “officially RESCINDED” and that they would be expected to return to work on Wednesday.

Food safety scientists at labs in San Francisco and Chicago received letters rescinding their previous layoff notices.

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Not all of the workers that Kennedy or his department have promised to bring back to work have received notices restoring their jobs. 

Two other labs at the FDA — drug safety scientists in Puerto Rico and Detroit — have so far not received letters, multiple laid-off employees in the labs said. 

Employees of the CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health also remain off the job. Kennedy had said a month ago that he would restore the lead poisoning experts in the center, saying that some of the layoffs could have been mistakes.

HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment asking for more details on which teams were cut and which were being brought back.  

Tuesday’s move to reverse some layoffs at HHS comes days after the department laid off hundreds more employees at the National Institutes of Health, blindsiding staff who had survived the initial wave of cuts in April. 

Layoffs included staff at the National Cancer Institute, National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Library of Medicine and Office of Research Facilities, two people said.

NIH employees were told that the additional cuts were prompted by a need to reinstate scientists while also meeting strict layoff quotas sought by the department.

Alexander Tin

Alexander Tin is a digital reporter for CBS News based in the Washington, D.C. bureau. He covers federal public health agencies.

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