Latest news with #StandUpforScience2025
Yahoo
20-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Dr. Francis Collins Led the NIH. Now, He Fears for the Future of Science
Dr. Francis Collins, former director of the National Institutes of Health, at the Stand Up for Science 2025 rally at the Lincoln Memorial on March 7, 2025 in Washington, DC. Credit - Alex Wong—Getty Images Dr. Francis Collins led the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), the world's largest funder of biomedical research, under three presidents—including Trump during his first term. He left that post in 2021 and retired from his career in government in March 2025. Collins shared with TIME why actions taken by the Trump Administration have made him deeply concerned about the future of scientific research in the U.S., and what he hopes new leadership and the public will do to combat it. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity. It's hard to answer that question in a simple way in the midst of everything that's going on now. Here I am as a private citizen trying to figure out what my next calling should be. I had served by then three different presidents—Obama, Trump, and Biden—over the course of 12 years, which was a new record for a presidentially appointed NIH director. It always seemed to me that it's good to have leadership refreshed on a regular basis for organizations that have a very complex and important mission [like NIH}. So, it did seem to me that it would be a good thing for me to step away and let the president pick another leader going forward. I stayed on longer than I probably otherwise would have because of COVID and the desire to have continuity during the worst pandemic in more than a century, with all the things that needed to happen with medical research. But by late 2021, while COVID was far from over, the organization of the response efforts for vaccines and therapeutics and diagnostics were in a stable place, and I thought it would be fair to step away and let a new person arrive. I've been increasingly concerned about the polarization of our society, and that goes back even before COVID. But COVID brought it out in a particularly troubling way, where information that might have been lifesaving, such as the use of the vaccines, did not always land with people who had already been influenced by lots of other misinformation, or even disinformation, coming from social media, cable news, and sometimes politicians. So when I stepped down as NIH director, I began the effort to try to put together a book called The Road to Wisdom. It focuses particularly on the topic of truth: that there really is such a thing as objective truth. A society that decides truth is just how you feel about it, and that alternative facts are okay, is heading into a very dangerous place. And it feels like that's sort of where we are. Read More: A Pill to Prevent COVID-19 Shows Promise Now, we see that kind of attitude spilling over into people's response in general to institutions, and certainly to science. It worries me greatly now, seeing how that has played out in the last couple of months, in terms of drastic actions that are being taken against the federal support of science, with cuts in the [research support NIH provides], with firings of thousands of scientists including more than a thousand at NIH without really much consideration of what the consequences would be. I felt I needed to be part of speaking out about why this is, for the average American, not a good idea. I was particularly compelled by the Stand Up for Science effort since it was organized by students. They had the courage, and also the deep concern about whether their futures are now in jeopardy. They are deeply troubled about whether that opportunity might be slipping away on the basis of all the changes that are being put forward. And some of those students are even wondering if they need to leave this country to go to another place to be able to live out their dreams. That's just an unprecedented kind of circumstance that seemed to require some reaction. The idea that NIH's funding of research on bat viruses in China led directly to COVID is simply not supported by the facts. Yes, NIH was interested in whether there might be viruses emerging in Chinese bats, because that's how MERS and SARS got started. But the bat coronaviruses that were studied by NIH contract research were far away from SARS-CoV-2 in their genome sequences—about the same level of similarity as a cow and a human. The possibility that SARS-CoV-2 might have been created from scratch in a lab was initially considered quite seriously by the virus experts, but they ultimately concluded this is simply not consistent with its genome sequence. Read More: What Leaving the WHO Means for the U.S. and the World There continues to be speculation, however, that the naturally occurring virus might have been secretly under study in the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and somehow escaped. There is no concrete evidence to support this, but the Chinese government has stonewalled efforts to examine lab notebooks or other materials that might shed light on what really happened. So this 'lab leak' possibility has to be considered—but the simplest synthesis of the current data is that a naturally occurring virus spread from bats to an intermediate host, possibly a raccoon dog, and then infected humans in the west corner of the Huanan market, where wild animals were being butchered. Unfortunately this topic of COVID origins has become a contentious and hyperpartisan issue, leading to further polarization of our divided country and to scapegoating and threatening of scientists. I would urge interested people to look closely at the actual facts. The second administration arrived with a very detailed plan already in hand, and they proceeded to implement that plan in a breathtakingly rapid series of policies and Executive Orders. In just two months, more dramatic changes have been made in science and medical research than anybody can remember. The first Trump administration had some of these same ideas, but there was more time for discussion, and more time to consider what the consequences might be. This time, the policies, including cutting funding and firing scientists, are being implemented very quickly, unfortunately without sufficient consideration of the harms that are being done. Medical research institutions across the country are in crisis. I am quite concerned. If you're an American who cares about health for yourself and for your family, and if you also care about our chances to give young people an opportunity to do amazing things in their scientific careers, and if you care about giving young people a chance at a scientific career, and if you care about how science and technology have been the main support of the U.S. economy since World War II, then taking a hammer to this amazing life-saving enterprise should concern you. [The pace of scientific progress] has profoundly slowed down already. Will it be recoverable with some adjustments, and maybe some rollbacks of the worst of the sledgehammer blows that have been struck so far? The approach to cure rare diseases with gene therapies is something that I have been very involved in. We're talking about 7,000 diseases that are now potentially on the pathway toward a genetic cure, especially using the CRISPR [gene editing] approach. My own lab is working on this approach for progeria [a rare genetic condition that causes children to age prematurely]. It is interesting and troubling to look at the reaction to what's happened in just the last two months; a lot of the young scientists who were potentially interested in that field now aren't quite so sure. Read More: The Power and Potential of Gene Tuning In China, the approach of CRISPR-based gene editing therapy for rare diseases has been identified as one of their highest priorities, and they are now already at the point of starting to run more clinical trials than the U.S. For those people who maybe are less impressed by the human impact of a slowdown in medical research, we also ought to think about what this means economically for the future of our nation, particularly with our most important competitor, China. Are we handing them leadership in an area, namely medical research, where the U.S. has led the world for decades? Is that really a good idea? Students don't have a lot of power and they're aware of that. What they can do, and what they did in organizing Stand Up for Science, is to try to communicate their perspective, their sense of alarm, their recognition that something serious is happening to the their willingness to identify voices that maybe can be even more powerful than their own, like those of patients. I've been calling for a "science communication core," where we enlist all of the science majors in colleges and universities, all of the high-school science teachers, all of the members of scientific societies, and give them the assignment to be communicators of what science is and what it can accomplish in a realistic, community-based way. We have a long way to go to actually convince a lot of Americans about just how important science is for our future. I'm very worried about that. Every survey that's been done shows a significant drop in public trust of scientists. Some of that, I have to admit, relates to the circumstances that happened during COVID. I've been very public about my concerns that our communication strategy had flaws in terms of trying to share information with people about what to do to protect yourself against the virus. I wish every time those recommendations had been made, there would have been a preamble saying, "There's a lot we don't know about the virus—we are trying to learn as fast as we can, but we're missing pieces—big ones. That means what we tell you today about a mask or about social distancing or vaccines or therapeutics might turn out to be wrong in another month or two when we have more data. Don't be surprised if that's the case. But please don't imagine that we're trying to jerk you around. We are doing the best we can with very imperfect data at a time of crisis." Read More: The Pandemic Turns 5. We Are Still Not Prepared for the Next One We didn't say that often enough. So when recommendations were made, people assumed that those were rock-solid, and then, when they had to change those a month or two later—when you found out, for instance, that asymptomatic people were likely to be spreaders of the virus—then people thought, "These people don't know what they're talking about." And so we lost confidence along the way. I will apologize for some of the things that we as scientists didn't do. I wish some of the people on the side, who were distributing malevolent information that was known not to be true about the pandemic, would apologize for their role. Where are the apologies for that behavior? The Great Barrington Declaration was released in October 2020, before we had vaccines or even knew that they would work. The document suggested that it would be better to let people who were not senior citizens go about their daily life without restrictions. That would help the economy and the educational system. Many more people would get infected, but this would assist the development of herd immunity. This would have been an interesting topic for a scientific discussion, but it was put forward as a policy document and presented to the Secretary of Health and Human Services the day after it was released. Any opportunity for scientific discussion was skipped, and the proposal seemed to be on the path toward a potential major policy change as the pandemic was raging. That was alarming to many of us. Almost every single public health organization published highly critical statements—the Secretary General of the World Health Organization and the scientific leadership in the U.K. also strongly objected. We know that about 30% of the people who died of COVID were under 65, so there would likely have been significantly increased casualties. Furthermore, it was never clear how you would sequester the older people so that somehow they were not exposed to the virus; people tend to live in families, after all. So the proposed plan seemed both impractical and dangerous. Pull NIH out of any kind of partisan situation. Traditionally, over all these decades, [NIH] has been supported by both parties in both chambers with enthusiasm for what it can do for health and for saving lives. Right now, almost everything seems to be partisan. So if Dr. Bhattacharya can help return to that non-political status, that would be a really good thing. Mix politics and science, you get politics. You kind of lose everything else. And that's unfortunately a little bit where things are right now. And then surround yourself with people who are as smart as they can be, and who are fearless in their willingness to tell you their opinions even if it might not be something you want to hear. The best thing a leader can do is to give permission to the people around them to say, "You're about to do the wrong thing." It wasn't always easy to hear that, but it was important to have that permission granted. And take advantage of the brain trust that you have access to as the NIH director. Use that connectivity. As somebody once said, "My own brain is limited, so I have to borrow all the brains I can from other people in order to make the boldest decision." You do feel like you've got to watch around yourself a little more carefully. Because it's not incredibly unusual to have someone—as happened right before the beginning of the Stand Up for Science event—come forward very aggressively with statements that were quite threatening and quite wrong in terms of their assumptions about COVID and whatever role I played. Read More: What to Know About Dr. Mehmet Oz, Trump's Pick to Lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services It does make you feel unsafe. I haven't yet reached the point…of having 24-hour security guards. And I hope I don't have to. That's incredibly disruptive of one's life and I couldn't possibly afford it anyway. But it does give me concern. I can't let that be a reason to go hide under my desk. That's just not an appropriate response. But some of the messages are frightening and certainly very hurtful. Actually, the [messages] that I find hardest to read are written to me by fellow Christians. I'm very open about my Christian faith. It's the rock I stand on. It's who I am. It's who I have been since I converted to Christianity at age 27. If I'm lost in a circumstance and don't know what to do, I'm likely to go to prayer or to the Bible to try to seek out some kind of insight or some path towards wisdom. And yet I will get emails from people who say, "You are a fake Christian. You can't possibly be really a follower of Jesus if you have done the following. If you had any Christian credibility at all, you would confess your sins and tell everybody that you repent of your evilness.' And some of them say I should just basically be in jail and maybe executed. These are coming from Christians who have been caught up in our terribly divided, polarized society where you mix politics and Christianity, and you get politics. It's been really helpful to have that anchor [of faith]. I don't have to explain to God what it's like to go through a difficult time. I don't need to explain to Jesus what suffering feels like. If you look at the wall [next to my desk], there are various printouts of scriptures or quotes that have been particularly encouraging to me when I needed to be reminded. So Psalm 46—God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Okay, we got trouble. So thank you, God, for being my refuge and strength. Read More: Foreign Aid Is Retreating. The Church Must Not You can get your context a little upside-down without having that anchor to faith and to what is good and holy and true, what we're all called to do. And that reassures you that even though it feels like there's a lot of headwinds, you're doing what you're supposed to do to try to stand up for principles that are long-lasting about faith and family and freedom and goodness and love and beauty and truth. Especially truth. I hope they will see this as a period where big, bold ideas got surfaced, deeply discussed by experts in multiple venues, and then formulated into actual initiatives that could benefit not just the people doing the work, but lots of other people. The genome project was like that. Maybe that's how I learned how important that could be. But the BRAIN initiative certainly followed that, and the All of Us project, which is now up to 800,000 Americans who are our partners in this effort to really figure out how genetics and environment and health behaviors all work together to see whether somebody is going to stay healthy or develop a chronic illness, and what we could do to prevent that. Its benefits are going to be significant because the data is accessible to all researchers who can begin to sift through and make those discoveries. I'm deeply troubled that both of those projects have had severe budget cuts, including just in the last week. The All of Us project's budget is down now to less than 30% of what it had been two years ago. It makes it almost untenable for the project to keep doing much more than just caretaking. And this is just at the time where this was going great and having so many new ideas emerging. I hope that's another thing a new NIH director will look at and figure out a way to assist with, because the promise of that still mostly lies ahead. I started to try to write a new anthem for Stand Up for Science. I figured that every protest group needs a song so that people can gather together and sing it. It didn't quite come together. So instead, I rewrote the words to a familiar folk song, "All the Good People," and that's what I sang at the Lincoln Memorial. I do believe strongly that music has the potential to bring people together when all else has failed. My wife and I are planning a music party in another couple of months where we will invite to our house as many people as we can fit, which might be about 50, and we'll try to carefully choose people on opposite sides of political issues and then see if by singing together over an evening something might happen. Contact us at letters@
Yahoo
08-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Hundreds rally in downtown Raleigh to protest Trump-Musk cuts to science research funds
Hundreds of protesters gathered Friday afternoon on the grassy Halifax Mall in downtown Raleigh to champion the value of scientific research. The rally was one of more than 30 planned Stand Up for Science 2025 events nationwide, from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco, to counter sweeping Trump administration actions attendees say have hamstrung critical, and at times life-saving, work. 'My husband and I have come out here to show our support for science, for researchers, and to show that science and research is not something you can just push away,' said Katherine Sivek, a language instructor from Zebulon who last year was diagnosed with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. Seated in a motorized wheelchair, Sivek held a sign that emphasized the importance National Institutes of Health funding has had on her treatment at Duke University's ALS Clinic. NIH is the nation's largest public funder of scientific research. In 2024, it awarded North Carolina researchers just shy of $2 billion across 2,822 projects, according to the NIH. While North Carolina is the ninth most populated state, it was sixth in NIH funding last year. Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill combined to receive more than half the state's total funding. Since Donald Trump took office, the agency's grant approval process has stalled. The administration's 15% cap on 'indirect' NIH grant payments for facilities and administrative costs, which is being challenged in court, would mean large medical institutions like Duke and UNC get hundreds of millions of dollars less each year. Speakers at the Stand Up For Science rally included local researchers, nonprofit advocates and U.S. Rep. Deborah Ross, a Wake County Democrat. Signs held throughout the crowd rebuked cost-cutting efforts by billionaire Elon Musk, who has led the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency. 'I don't care if they're not your political party, you need to contact members of Congress and tell them the consequences of these cuts,' Ross told a small number of rallygoers after addressing the full crowd. Stephan Moll, a blood clot expert in UNC's Division of Hematology, said he attended the rally to promote scientific veracity. 'It's this introduction into the thinking of people that science and truth doesn't really matter,' he said. 'That you make something up, and if you repeat it many times, then people think maybe that is a truth.'
Yahoo
08-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
NM Legislative Recap March 7: Scientists slam federal grant suspension
Brandi Hess, a graduate student at the University of New Mexico, described how federal funding cuts affect her research during a rally outside the New Mexico Legislature on March 7, 2025. (Photo by Austin Fisher / Source NM) For University of New Mexico graduate student Brandi Hess, the Trump administration's cuts to federal grant funding for research have 'completely' disrupted her neuroscience research and thrown her academic career into jeopardy. For the last two-and-a-half years, Hess and her mentor have been studying repeated traumatic brain injuries, and they found a connection between them and patients' behavioral and cognitive deficits. The work was funded by the Initiative to Maximize Student Development, which provides young biomedical researchers with doctorate fellowships, financial and peer support. But in early February, the National Institutes of Health announced it would stop paying research universities and medical schools for facility and administrative costs. Hess said she submitted her grant renewal at the beginning of February but, as of Friday, it was still sitting on someone's desk because the National Institutes of Health's grant review panels remain suspended, despite legal rulings blocking the order. Hess joined other scientists and advocates outside the Roundhouse on Friday afternoon to highlight science's role as a public good, and to push back against Trump's attack on diversity in scientific research. Without the grant, Hess cannot actually sign the contract to join the laboratory where she and her mentor would have conducted their research. She said the news made her feel awful. 'I've been having to scramble for alternative mentors,' Hess told Source NM in an interview. She said she was told if she doesn't find a new one by May 1, she may have to take a leave of absence from the program. The event was called Stand Up for Science 2025 and coincided with a rally in Washington D.C. and 30 other cities across the U.S. In the past month, federal agencies have unlawfully fired researchers, censored scientists' work and cut spending at the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Energy, said Nina Christie, a postdoctoral research fellow at the UNM's Center for Alcohol, Substance use and Addictions. 'We're seeing an executive branch that is hell-bent on making sure that science does not include people that they don't like,' Christie told the crowd gathered outside the Roundhouse. 'We say no.' Christie said the research threatened by the cuts improves agriculture, heart disease and substance use disorder, for example. 'Science saves lives and creates jobs,' she said. Christie said she moved to New Mexico to reduce suffering caused by substance use, and helped organize the event on Friday because of an 'existential threat' to scientists' work and public health. 'It's existential, it's real and it's coming from our own government,' she said. 'Whether you directly feel it or not, we all live in a world where we have benefited from science.' If not for science, there wouldn't be lifesaving treatments for cancer, heart disease, suicide, genetic disease and substance use, Christie said. 'A lot of people will think it doesn't affect them, and it will,' Hess said. 'This has real-world consequences: Your family members that have to take metformin, your family members that are under cancer treatment, your family members that have heart disease. All of those treatments came from science, and progress will stop if funding stops.' The Senate voted 27-10 to pass Senate Bill 507, which would increase the penalty for carrying a concealed firearm without a permit from a petty misdemeanor to a misdemeanor, while reducing the number of course hours required to get a permit. Senate Bill 20, which would raise taxes on cigarettes and other tobacco products, and direct the income into a Nicotine Use Prevention and Control Fund, passed the Senate in a 25-14 vote. The Senate, without debate, unanimously voted in favor of Senate Bill 274, which would raise the thresholds for state agencies and local governments to sell property without state approval. The House passed House Bill 54; House Bill 449; House Bill 405; House Bill 156; House Bill 289; House Bill 323; and House Bill 137. The chamber was still debating House Bill 9, known as the Immigrant Safety Act, as of press time. Afternoon committees were delayed to the evening. The Senate Education Committee passed an amended version of House Bill 297, which would open up more ways for teachers to be certified in computer science education; House Bill 193, which would expand the Legislative Education Study Committee's scope of work to the entire public education system; House Bill 238, which would allow secondary school teachers to count more professional work hours toward instructional hours; and House Bill 260, which would prohibit some kinds of physical restraints of students in schools, including chemical restraint, mechanical restraint, prone restraint and seclusion without continuous line-of-sight supervision. The Senate Finance Committee passed Senate Bill 170, which would make electric utilities eligible for money out of the Public Project Revolving Fund so they can more quickly build infrastructure for expanding businesses; and a substitute version of Senate Bill 376, which would cut health care premiums paid by state workers while fixing a budget shortfall in their insurance plan. The Senate Judiciary Committee passed Senate Bill 213, which would require motorists to yield to transit buses when they merge into traffic from a designated bus stop. The Senate Rules Committee passed Senate Memorial 13, which would ask state agencies to use more citizen science projects. The Senate Indian, Rural & Cultural Affairs Committee passed Senate Bill 374, which would create three new trust funds to help land grants pay for infrastructure. The Senate Tax, Business and Transportation Committee passed a substitute version of Senate Bill 168, which would levy a tax on travel insurance; Senate Bill 230, which would raise the maximum fees that can be charged by notaries; Senate Bill 364, which would allow people with work authorizations from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to work as police officers; and a substitute version of Senate Bill 383, which would allow the city of Roswell to levy a sales tax to pay for repairing infrastructure damaged by floods. The House Tax and Revenue Committee passed House Bill 330, which would, in part, create the land grant-merced and acequia infrastructure trust fund; and House Bill 357, which would require the Health Care Authority to establish rules for excluding gross receipts taxes for Mi Via Waiver recipients. The House Education Committee unanimously passed House Bill 532, which would require school districts to create water safety guidance for students before each school year. The committee also tabled Senate Bill 242, the Advancing the Science of Reading Act, sponsored by President Pro Tempore Mimi Stewart (D-Albuquerque), after two and a half hours of questions. Committee members brought concerns over the cost of materials and professional development, inclusion of dual-language learning, academic freedom at the university level and the ramifications of 'disallowing' balanced literacy over structured literacy. Rep. G. Andrés Romero (D-Albuquerque), voiced frustration over the fact that the bill did not go through the Legislative Education Study Interim Committee before the session and said he could not promise the bill would be rescheduled for a hearing. 'I will say, too, the pressure that's been put on members, and the tactics that have been employed on members, is to me, unacceptable,' Romero told the bill sponsors. 'Calling around, getting different folks to call, triangulate, have side conversations is very, very troubling to me.' The House Tax and Revenue Committee passed House Bill 330, which would, in part, create the land grant-merced and acequia infrastructure trust fund; and House Bill 357, which would require the Health Care Authority to establish rules for excluding gross receipts taxes for Mi Via Waiver recipients. The House Government, Elections and Indian Affairs Committee passed House Bill 402, which requires that dental provider information be loaded into payment systems in a timely manner and reimbursements be released when delays happen; House Bill 554, which would require zoning authorities accommodate accessory dwelling units in residential zoning districts, as well as multifamily residential housing within commercial zoning districts; House Bill 343, which would require healthcare providers to screen for substance-exposed newborns at birthing facilities and have plans for safe care before these babies are discharged; and House Bill 416, which proposes changes to public employee pensions. The committee also passed House Memorial 40, which proposes studying the feasibility of creating a state office of peace; House Memorial 34, which proposes the New Mexico Supreme Court convene a taskforce to study gaps in services available to victims of domestic violence and to make recommendations for addressing them; and House Memorial 27, which proposes having an interim committee develop a proposal for an exception to the Anti-Donation Clause to allow the state to use funds for public assistance services. The House Health and Human Services Committee passed Senate Bill 417, which proposes changing the parameters for defining parenthood when a child is conceived through 'assisted reproductive methods,' and House Bill 542, which would establish the Childbirth Income Tax Credit. The committee also rolled House Bill 531, which proposes the creation of a Santa Fe College of Osteopathic Medicine escrow fund; and House Bill 534, which proposes requiring the Children, Youth and Families Department to use autobiographical storytelling as a trauma-informed strategy when working with children, indefinitely at the request of the sponsors, to be worked on during the interim. The Senate Tax, Business and Transportation Committee will meet at 9 a.m. on Saturday in Room 311. The Senate is expected to convene at 1 p.m. on Saturday. The Senate Judiciary Committee will meet on Saturday afternoon after the Senate floor session. The Senate Finance Committee will meet at 11 a.m. on Saturday. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
