The Trump administration’s policies on cutting NIH and CDC funding and the impacts on future medical advancements
By NAREN KRISHNA JEGAN — science@theaggie.org
On Jan. 30, 2025, my principal investigator (PI) began our lab meeting with a voice of concern.
“This will be our hardest year,” he said. “We may struggle financially, and we are unaware of what our future may look like, but we must try to do our best in these times.”
Later, on Feb. 5, 2025, I received an email from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Intramural Training and Education (OITE).
“Due to a presidential executive order the NIH Intramural Research Program has paused interviews for all summer internship programs,” the email reads. “NIH investigators will be unable to interview you or make offers at this time. We will continue to update you on the status of SIP 2025 as information becomes available.”
I realized the gravity of the risk of being a researcher the day the NIH and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) funding cuts were announced.
In his first few weeks of presidency, President Donald Trump and his administration have taken sweeping and abrupt actions against the NIH and CDC, threatening the integrity of medical research and public health. At the NIH, drastic funding cuts and operational freezes have thrown critical research into chaos, jeopardizing advancements in maternal health, cancer treatment and other life-saving studies. Researchers face hiring bans, grant delays and heavy restrictions, stalling progress in fields that directly impact millions of lives.
Meanwhile, the CDC has been subjected to outright censorship. Entire web pages containing crucial health information on human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), youth health risks and disease prevention were erased overnight under an executive order. Scientists have been muzzled, forced to submit their work for government review and even remove their names from publications.
These reckless policies don’t just slow scientific progress — they actively strip the public of vital health resources, leaving Americans uninformed and vulnerable. The consequences of these actions will be felt for years, as research stalls, trust erodes and critical health initiatives are dismantled in the name of politics.
A major responsibility of biomedical researchers and practitioners of medicine is to establish truthful communication and a line of trust. Unfortunately, history has shown that when this trust is broken, the consequences can be devastating.
One of the most infamous examples is the Tuskegee Syphilis Study (1932-1972), where the United States Public Health Service knowingly withheld treatment from black men with syphilis to study the disease’s progression, despite the availability of penicillin. This unethical study led to deep mistrust in the medical system, particularly among African American communities, with lasting impacts on healthcare disparities today. When trust is violated, the consequences extend far beyond the immediate victims, shaping public perception and influencing healthcare decisions for generations.
Trump’s rash actions against the NIH and CDC are leading to a repetition of these mistakes. By censoring scientific research, slashing funding and restricting experts from openly communicating findings, the administration undermines public trust in two of the nation’s most vital health agencies. If these actions persist, Americans may grow increasingly skeptical of medical guidance.
COVID-19 demonstrated in real time how transparency and trust in scientific institutions can mean the difference between life and death. In the early stages, misinformation and government mismanagement led to confusion, delayed responses and preventable deaths. When public officials downplayed the severity of the virus, suppressed expert opinions and provided conflicting guidance, trust in health agencies like the CDC and NIH suffered. The result was widespread vaccine hesitancy, resistance to public health measures and the persistence of conspiracy theories — issues that continue to impact global health today.
Science thrives on the truth. Regardless of whether our results create a paradigm shift or go through hundreds of rounds of failure, our duty to science is to share and educate about the facts. To discover these truths and have the opportunity to share them, immense support is required in various forms, namely grants and funding.
At UC Davis Health, I work in a nanomedicine lab specializing in minimally invasive cancer nanotherapeutics. We are fortunate to be affiliated with a National Cancer Institute (NCI) as an NCI-Designated Cancer Center through UC Davis Health’s Comprehensive Cancer Center. Our research utilizes a bench-to-bedside approach, where the results of our research done in the laboratory are directly used to develop new ways to treat patients. Moreover, we are even more fortunate to continue working on innovative nanomaterial research through the support of the NIH in various grants.
These grants provide us financial support in various aspects: reagents, facilities, highly specialized equipment, data collection and analysis and even clinical trials, which bring novel therapies into the market. This doesn’t even include the salary of those involved in the research.
Without these resources, labs across the country will face crippling limitations, forcing them to halt projects, lay off staff or abandon promising research altogether. Young scientists, particularly students and early-career researchers, will have fewer opportunities to contribute to groundbreaking discoveries. The pipeline of innovation that fuels advancements in medicine and public health will begin to dry up, leaving gaps in our understanding of diseases and delaying critical treatments.
The impact extends beyond research facilities. Patients who rely on experimental treatments — such as those suffering from rare diseases, aggressive cancers or neurodegenerative disorders — may see their last hopes vanish as clinical trials are suspended due to a lack of funding. The development of new antibiotics, desperately needed in the fight against antimicrobial resistance, will slow to a crawl. Meanwhile, maternal and infant health programs, already underfunded in the U.S., will face further setbacks, increasing the risk of preventable complications and deaths.
Global health initiatives will also suffer. The NIH and CDC play critical roles in monitoring and preventing emerging infectious diseases worldwide. Cuts to these agencies hinder disease surveillance, vaccine development and outbreak response, making future pandemics more difficult to contain. When U.S. leadership in science weakens, international collaborations falter, and the entire world pays the price.
The brash, authoritarian stance the Trump administration has taken will have catastrophic consequences for biomedical research, public health and global medical advancements. The damage inflicted on scientific progress and public trust will not be easily undone. If these cuts and restrictions persist, we risk losing a generation of discoveries that could have saved lives, exacerbating health disparities and setting back progress by decades.
Cutting science isn’t just cutting budgets — it’s cutting lives, cutting progress, cutting the future before it even begins. When we strip away research, we strip away hope from patients, innovation from minds and trust from the very institutions meant to protect us. The cost of discovery is high, but the cost of ignorance is far greater. The real question is: How many breakthroughs are we willing to lose before we realize what we have destroyed?
Written by: Naren Krishna Jegan — science@theaggie.org
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