This is just plain evil
When he was in office, Republican Senator Roy Blunt was an enthusiastic advocate for funding Alzheimer’s research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). When Blunt announced in 2021 that he was retiring from office, the NIH dedicated their Alzheimer’s research center to him, calling it the Roy Blunt Center for Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias Research.
Last week the Trump “administration” slashed funding for that much-beloved — by Republicans and Democrats alike — institution. They also let go ten percent of its scientists and researchers, including the incoming director, a highly-regarded Alzheimer’s researcher.
Stanford University neurology professor Dr Michael Greicius said he believes Trump and Musk’s unlawful firing of federally-funded scientists could set Alzheimer’s research back 20 years. “I think there’s a real risk of a generation or more of data being lost,” he said.
The problem is that data and know-how are spread across multiple human researchers. When they go, the expertise goes with them. That precious knowledge base is not recoverable.
The irony is that Alzheimer’s disease is the third most expensive disease in the United States, costing approximately $100 billion each year. It is one of the most prevalent illnesses in the elderly population, and will become even more significant with the overall aging of the population. To put it in words that Trump and Musk can understand, finding cures and treatments for Alzheimer’s Disease is a great investment.
This is a problem that is not unique to Alzheimer’s research. Indiscriminate firings by the Moron-in-Chief and his evil Svengali puppet master are destroying government expertise across the board. Again, once these people are gone they cannot be replaced, and vast depositories of wisdom and processes that are handed down from generation to generation disappear. This places the security of the United States at risk, and that risk will soon become a clear and present danger.
The scientific field in general is a case in point. No single nation dominates in scientific research. The United States is in a tight competition with China for science and tech leadership. As innovations accrue, economic value and geopolitical advantages accrue as well. When key scientific people lose their jobs en masse, something synergistic is lost. They take their expertise and instincts with them that is, at best, only represented by cold data they may or may not leave behind.
Nobody wants waste, fraud or abuse. But you get rid of it by first discovering if it exists in the first place, and then (and ONLY then) you remove it with a scalpel, not a chainsaw. These are subtleties that are lost on the “genius” Elon Musk. More to the point, they don’t make good sound bites or memes. A chainsaw is a thrilling image to millions of MAGA morons who can barely comprehend entertainment more sophisticated than fire. It’s louder, bigger and uglier than a scalpel. And that’s the point.
Considering that Musk is in charge of these idiotic bloodlettings, a further irony is that, in the end, it isn’t rocket science. Ecologists, climate scientists, AI experts, chemists and other highly skilled workers — including rocket scientists — have been adversely affected. The scientists who remain at agencies are trying to do more with less, while in many cases anxiously awaiting more cuts.
What’s more, the cuts themselves have a chilling effect. Many promising young scientists, who once saw government work as synonymous with job security, might now view the government as a hostile and uncertain place to work. As with everything Donald Trump touches and everything Elon Musk slashes, in the final analysis, there are no winners, only losers.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.