Attacking Medical Science

By Mike Koetting September 15, 2025

Every once and a while, you’ll run across an article about a bunch of teens absolutely trashing a local school. You’ll shake your head and wonder, “What the hell is this about? Okay, they don’t like school. But this doesn’t make any sense.”

What Trump and his Republican enablers are doing to the American scientific enterprise is remarkably similar, except with results that are going to be a lot worse. It’s a bit hard to tell exactly how great the damage will be given the uncertainty of what actions will withstand court challenges, what administrative actions will be taken to circumvent courts or where the juvenile in charge will change his mind. But working on this essay made it clear to me it is even worse than you probably imagined. Media covers it one event at a time, without stepping back to see the whole catalogue of damage. Likewise, the more you look at it, not only do you realize it’s more dangerous, but you also realize it is even more senseless than appears.

Withholding & Cancelling Funds

The Administration’s FY26 budget proposal would have included a roughly 40% cut for the budgets of the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Health, the two agencies which have primary responsibility for funding bio-medical research.

It’s not that anyone is claiming these agencies are perfect. Complaints that they have become too process and reputation-oriented abound. There is no shortage of working scientists who complain about these agencies. But funding cuts of this magnitude would be a crushing blow to the scientific enterprise and would not actually address the acknowledged problems.

Nor are these major drains on the federal budget—the two together account for about three-quarters of 1% of the budget. And there is widespread acknowledgement that the American scientific enterprise that has grown with these agencies has made enormous contributions to the lives of people all over the world, but especially Americans.

Fortunately, in a rare moment of backbone, Congress is pushing back. Although the budget is not finalized as I write this, it appears that the actual budgets will not result in huge cuts. This is not the same as keeping up with inflation or having funds to address new threats or accelerate promising developments, but it avoids the worse.

Trump, however seems intent on wreaking havoc and has used a variety of administrative actions to withhold funds for topics he doesn’t like (research on racial disparities, AIDS or reproductive issues), to punish institutions he does not like, or just random collateral damage.

How this mélange of destruction will play out over a long period is yet to be determined. Even if turns out that some of these concerns are a bit hysterical, these actions are genuinely damaging to the nation’s health future. Once labs are disassembled, clinical trials halted, investigators leave the country, and the future placed in limbo, not all will be picked up—even the most promising. Not only will this lessen the benefits we might otherwise reap from scientific progress, it also squanders the resources that have been spent to get to this point.

Cancellation of all contracts on mRNA funding is a salient example. HHS simply cancelled about $500 million in existing contracts. mRNA uses the genetic codes of viruses to “train” our immune systems to fight the virus. The approach, famously underlying how we were able to develop a COVID vaccine so quickly, creates a mechanism by which many different viruses can be attacked. This enormously simplifies the process of developing protection from new and emerging viruses. Without question, cancelling these contracts puts the United States at greater risk from new viruses, the emergence of which is a biological certainty. This action also stopped ongoing work on how to apply this technology to existing scourges, such as HIV and some cancers. It is absurd to think that this makes the nation safer.

And this is just one example.

It’s also the case that the disruption to funding is a major blow to the system for training the next generation of scientists. The following charts are chilling.

Jeremy Berg from NIH Data

While I assume some of this could be made up in following years, it is inevitable these delays will create a problem for the next generation. And if it is allowed to continue for several years, the damage will be huge, particularly if it’s accompanied by scientists fleeing the US.

Brain Rot

Perhaps more immediately damaging is the institutionalization of brain rot at the top of the nation’s bio-medical institutions, the MAGA war on vaccines being the primary example. Kennedy, presumably with Trump’s backing and certainly without any opposition from Republican leadership, is systematically stripping the scientific establishment of responsible supervision and placing it in the hands of quacks—and I use that term non-hyperbolically.

Take for instance HHS hiring David Geier to lead the study on the connection between vaccines and autism. He has no advanced degrees, he has been fined for practicing medicine without a license, is the author of several “studies” that have been torn apart for logical and data inconsistencies, and he ignores or flatly contradicts several large and scientifically rigorous studies that have categorically refuted several of his claims. (It is sometimes a bit hard to pin down because when a claim is proven false, he simply changes a few terms and makes a new version of the same claims.)

The obvious chaos at CDC is another example. CDC no doubt made mistakes in the COVID outbreak. Some of those were as a result of bureaucratic inertia and some a result of trying to hit a moving target in an uncertain environment. But the drain of leadership that is willing to stand up for the principles of unbiased science is concerning. Moreover, it is fracturing the scientific voice in the country, leading to confusing and serious differences in policy from one entity to the other. Again, the argument is not for lock-step uniformity without basis. Science depends on questioning assumptions. But unless sciences’ application to policy is done in some structured, uniform way, the result will be chaotic.

But Why?

There are so many things wrong with this attack on science—and I haven’t even touched on the non-biomedical damage—I am simply beside myself trying to figure out why. It makes no sense.

It’s not like these are major financial drains. Yes, they are non-trivial amounts, but they are not going to impact the deficit that anyone could notice. And it’s not like these anti-scientific positions have huge public support. In fact, although there was dissatisfaction with “institutional science” during COVID, support for federal investment in science remains strong in both parties.

Civic Health and Institutions Project

And for all the press the anti-vaxxers get, public support for vaccines also remains strong, even if slightly reduced.

Annenberg Public Policy Center, U of Pennsylvania

Perhaps there is some thought that those who are truly at odds with the scientific community—for whatever reason—will become even more fanatical in their loyalty to MAGA.  But this only makes sense in the context of treating MAGA as a religion. Any rational political calculation readily shows this group will support Trump no matter what.

I keep coming back to this as the adult version of teenagers trashing a school. They do it because they can. It allows them to show their power and to reflect an inchoate anger at institutions that convey messages that limit their own expression of ego. That the nation’s bio-medical future should be put at risk by this childish behavior is unforgivable.

Even more unforgivable is the behavior of Congress people who go along with this. Senators Cassidy and Barrasso are both physicians and have both stated on the floor of the Senate that vaccines work and are an important part of keeping America safe. In hearings last week they voiced their concerns about the Kennedy-induced roiling at CDC. But after the hearings, both indicated they would support Kennedy because Trump was doing such a great job. It is hard to imagine a more blatant dismantling of the idea of rational democracy where people refuse to stand up for what they admit to be true. Good-bye checks and balances.

It is almost impossible to overstate how enraged the American people should be. And worried.