Trump Cuts Target Next Generation of Scientists and Public Health Leaders

The notices came all weekend, landing in the inboxes of federal scientists, doctors and public health professionals: Your work is no longer needed.

At the National Institutes of Health, the nation’s premier biomedical research agency, an estimated 1,200 employees — including promising young investigators slated for larger roles — have been dismissed.

At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, two prestigious training programs were gutted: one that embeds recent public health graduates in local health departments and another to cultivate the next generation of Ph.D. laboratory scientists. But the agency’s Epidemic Intelligence Service — the “disease detectives” who track outbreaks around the world — has apparently been spared, perhaps because of an uproar among alumni after a majority of its members were told on Friday that they would be let go.

President Trump’s plan to shrink the size of the federal work force dealt blows to thousands of civil servants in the past few days. But the cuts to the Department of Health and Human Services — coming on the heels of the coronavirus pandemic, the worst public health crisis in a century — have been especially jarring. Experts say the firings threaten to leave the country exposed to further shortages of health workers, putting Americans at risk if another crisis erupts.

Public health officials, for instance, have been tracking a lethal strain of bird flu that they say remains a low risk to Americans. In recent weeks, however, it claimed its first victim in the United States — a patient in Louisiana who had been exposed to a backyard flock.

“It’s not canceled,” Elon Musk, the billionaire in charge of the downsizing, wrote on social media in response to the blowback about the purported dismantling of the Epidemic Intelligence Service.