It has been a bad week, borderline flu, just like everyone else in the office since the new year (with 7 of 18 having had a COVID relapse earlier). Plus, and more important, with each passing day of Trump v2.0 it gets harder to keep up, so straight to the predicament of our scientific friends, colleagues, and benefactors. With minor league baseball at the end.
Part the First: COVID-19 is still here despite what our leaders want to believe. Trump administration says it will pull back billions in Covid funding from local health departments:
“The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago,” the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement.
In a related move, more than two dozen Covid-related research grants funded by the National Institutes of Health have been canceled. Earlier this month, the Trump administration shut down ordering from covidtest.gov, the site where Americans could have COVID-19 tests delivered to their mailboxes for no charge.
Although the Covid federal public health emergency has ended, the virus is still killing Americans: 458 people per week on average have died from Covid over the past four weeks, according to CDC data.
Nothing to see here, move along, the pandemic is so over. Not exactly. I suppose if you suspect you have COVID-19, you should just let it go, ride it out, without a test. That is one way to make “COVID-19” disappear. And as has been covered here before, going on to the next shiny new object is exactly the wrong thing to do. Would COVID-19 have been a pandemic if research had continued on SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV instead of languishing? Perhaps. But more likely not. Our leaders act like those who think they can wait to buy property insurance until the National Hurricane Center predicts that within seven days their house is in the path of the fifteenth hurricane of the season, this one likely to be Category 4 or 5 at landfall. On that note, I have heard from real estate peeps on the Georgia coast that hurricane damage to dwelling and contents is currently limited to $250,000 on an island where that will get you a 47-year-old condo with the original appliances still in place. But that is another story.
Part the Second: The Great Barrington Declaration is still with us. I had planned to include a discussion of In Covid’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us in a future essay here. I find the responses to historians and political scientists to scientific issues to generally add a useful and productive perspective to the science of the past and the present, while most of my colleagues have no use for “outsiders’” views. In this case Dr. Jonathan Howard has covered the book and especially the Great Barrington Declaration like a blanket. BTW, I am convinced the name, Great Barrington Declaration, accounts for 80% of the “likes” it has gotten in the form of about a million signatures. Dr. Howard:
Before deciding whether to read the whole book, I skipped to the section on the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) and it’s three authors, Drs. Sunetra Gupta, Martin Kulldorff, and Jay Bhattacharya. Based on that chapter, I am not going to waste my time reading further. There are so many things wrong with it, it’s hard to know where to begin. I feel nearly every paragraph should come with some sort of disclaimer that reads, “No one who worked on a COVID unit would ever say anything like that.”
Rather than going into detail here, I recommend a cup of coffee and a comfortable chair. TL;DR will be the reaction to many by this piece by Dr. Howard. I strongly disagree. Earlier this week The Rev Kev noted I was showed great restraint by not calling Dr. Jay Bhattacharya a quack. Since that post was published Bhattacharya has been confirmed as Director of the National Institutes of Health – the one agency that dwarfs all others in impact in advances in the biomedical sciences over the past sixty years. Perhaps crank would be the better term? Jay Bhattacharya has an MD but that is as useful as the JD who graduated from law school but never passed a Bar Exam. Regarding the other ancient term “quack,” suffice it to say there are waddlings of quacking animals dispersed all over the current landscape.
Part the Third. SARS-CoV-2 is a persistent pathogen, but we already knew that. Whole-body visualization of SARS-CoV-2 biodistribution in vivo by immunoPET imaging in non-human primates. This is a remarkable paper from Nature last week. Heavy technical going, but the high-resolution pictures are worth the proverbial thousand words. From the Abstract:
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused at least 780 million cases globally. While available treatments and vaccines have reduced the mortality rate, spread and evolution of the virus are ongoing processes. Despite extensive research, the long-term impact of SARS-CoV-2 infection is still poorly understood and requires further investigation. Routine analysis provides limited access to the tissues of patients, necessitating alternative approaches to investigate viral dissemination in the organism. We address this issue by implementing a whole-body in vivo imaging strategy to longitudinally assess the biodistribution of SARS-CoV-2. We demonstrate in a COVID-19 non-human primate model that a single injection of radiolabeled…human monoclonal antibody targeting a preserved epitope of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein allows longitudinal tracking of the virus by positron emission tomography with computed tomography (PET/CT). Convalescent animals exhibit a persistent…PET signal in the lungs, as well as in the brain, three months following infection. This imaging approach also allows viral detection in various organs, including the airways and kidneys, of exposed animals during the acute infection phase. Overall, the technology we developed offers a comprehensive assessment of SARS-CoV-2 distribution in vivo and provides a promising approach for the non-invasive study of long-COVID pathophysiology.
SARS-CoV-2 hits and stays. And once again, the choice of experimental model is critical in such studies. The scientists who do this work give thanks every day and hope their research will provide answers.
Part the Fourth: The waddlings whack cancer research. Cancer research, long protected, feels ‘devastating’ effects under Trump (paywall). Has the War on Cancer succeeded yet, after more than 50 years? That depends on the definitions of “success” and “cure.” In the first place cancer is a thousand different diseases, not one, not two, not twenty. A friend recently published a paper that took a careful look at the genetics of colon cancer. Transformation can effect literally everything a cell does in colon cancer. Thus, the refractoriness colon cancer in so many patients. Too many targets. Too many variables for the number of nonlinear equations. The matrix will not compute and AI cannot solve a time-dependent problem that has more variables than equations, no matter how slick it is.
In the second place, modern clinical oncology has made wondrous advances. Many of these are covered in The Emperor of All Maladies and virtually all of them have been supported by the National Institutes of Health. I can attest to this personally. Three years ago this week, I finished a long course chemotherapy and radiation. My oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma remains resolved (so far, fingers crossed), and I weigh what I did as a high school senior. Could have done without making that lemonade out of seven bushels of lemons, though. Twenty years ago, I would still be recovering from ugly, invasive surgery and a much rougher version of both radiation and chemotherapy with long-lasting side effects from both. My current mild dry mouth is trivial. Twenty years from now, my cancer will be much rarer because of a vaccine that works, if my grandchildren’s children have vaccines available to them. So, cutting cancer research funding is just plain nuts:
The policy changes strike at a time when progress against cancer is at a high point. Federal investment has seeded a plethora of new therapies and driven a rapid decline in cancer deaths. “Every-freaking-body should be waking up and saying 34% more people are living with cancer instead of dying from it in the last 30 years. It’s anti-smoking campaigns, screening technologies, new tests, new therapies, new surgeries,” said Robert Winn, the director of the VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center. That’s directly thanks to dollars from the federal government and the National Cancer Institute in particular, Winn said.
All that investment over the decades…has brought cancer science to the point where new discoveries are accelerating. In many ways, the stage is poised to bring a dizzying number of advances to cancer for the next 10 years, including new targeted therapies, immunotherapies, and multi-cancer screening technologies.
Yes, just plain nuts. Period. And the thing is, given that every person in this country, including MAGA nation, knows the costs, consequences, and outcomes of cancer, does Trump v2.0 really think this is a good idea? Good question.
Part the Fifth: The hits, they keep on coming. Dr. Oz and the Plot Against Medicare. Dr. Mehmet Oz, former TV talking head and Senate candidate in a state in which he did not really live, was a legitimate physician. He was nevertheless disaffiliated by Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons. Dr. Oz will be in charge of Medicare and Medicaid in Trump v2.0. For years, Dr. Oz has been a “spokesman” for Medicare Advantage plans. Medicare Advantage is a grift from the get-go that was supposed to make Medicare more efficient (that word, again) by doing more with less. Not so much, actually:
Yet the mortal threat Oz poses to American healthcare goes deeper than his six-figure stake in the country’s biggest and most notorious private insurer. For years, Oz has worked as a pitchman for Medicare Advantage (MA) plans. This managed care alternative allows corporations to bill the federal government for administering Medicare benefits on its behalf, and is a boon for private insurers. As a UnitedHealth shareholder and licensed insurance broker, Oz has long been financially and ideologically committed to the takeover of traditional Medicare by private insurers. Led by UnitedHealth, the insurance industry has made a hugely profitable algorithmic science out of denying and delaying care to maximize profits.
Another complete takedown that needed to be done by Alexander Zaitchik, who is very well prepared for the task. His Owning the Sun: A People’s History of Monopoly Medicine from Aspirin to COVID-19 Vaccines (Counterpoint Press, 2023) was reviewed here in July 2023. If I am able, I just might work until I die so I don’t have to ever deal with United Healthcare again is this lifetime.
Part the Sixth. The hits, they keep on coming, again. Why RFK Jr.’s pick for a vaccine-autism review may be familiar to Retraction Watch readers. Short read, a story not unlike one that puts Peter Duesberg in charge of HIV/AIDS research. Here is a snippet:
Geier has a long history of promoting the debunked claim of a link between vaccines and autism, STAT and others report. He has published on the topic as recently as 2020. A December 2020 paper lists his affiliation as the Institute of Chronic Illnesses, an organization he founded with his father Mark Geier, court documents say. In 2011, the Maryland State Board of Physicians disciplined Geier for practicing medicine without a license. He’s currently listed in the HHS employee directory as a senior data analyst, the Post reports.
Another episode in the continuing saga, “This will not end well.”
Part the Seventh. The richest country in the world hordes its money in a snit instead of sharing its expertise to reduce the horrific burden of disease in the Global South. Agency moves to terminate nearly 1000 awards, including programs involving “DEI.” I suppose I am naïve but I really do expect better of us, US, despite our many failings. From Abraham Lincoln’s Address to Congress in 1862, when the Union was in grave danger then, too. His prose is neither presentist nor anachronistic. It absolutely fits in today (link from the National Park Service, God save it):
“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.
We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We, even we here, hold the power, and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free — honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just — a way which if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless.”
Should South Africa and other countries in the Global South fund their own research? There are at least two ways of looking at this. One is that this is their problem, so let them deal with it. This perspective is exactly backwards. The other, of course, is that disease is everyone’s problem, so the more human and humane way to consider supporting science in the Global South is to understand that “we are all in this together” and that we do still have “the better angels of our nature,” however effaced they are at the national political level. Yes, there is a reason why Lincoln is at the top of his list. Anyway:
(Glenda) Gray, chief scientific officer and former head of South Africa’s Medical Research Council, notes that the country, which has more people living with HIV than any other, has played a pivotal role in clinical trials that have shaped international guidelines about the most effective ways to use anti-HIV and TB drugs. The trials have also helped lead to approvals of new drugs by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Landmark studies in South Africa have, for example, shown that anti-HIV drugs taken by breastfeeding mothers reduce the risk of transmission to their babies and demonstrated the power of long-acting pre-exposure prophylaxis for HIV that was Science’s Breakthrough of the Year in 2024.
Personally, I think the very term “pre-exposure prophylaxis” is the problem with a lot of people…Past time to wake up, fellow citizens.
Part the Eighth. And in other, better news, local will win in the long run. In Praise of Communitarian-not Corporate-Baseball. A paean to minor league baseball as the baseball season begins once again. This, at a time when Shohei Ohtani’s former factotum and interpreter goes to prison for taking millions out of Ohtani’s bank accounts to gamble. We, of course, are supposed to believe this happened without Ohtani knowing a thing. OK, this just might be believable in a world in which the only thing Shohei the Magnificent must keep up with in his bubble is the thousand-dollar set of headphones he wears in the clubhouse and on the Dodgers jet. It is not believable for a nanosecond that his waddling of financial managers and agents did not see the money disappearing. But the $700M second coming of Babe Ruth, pitching and hitting homeruns at the same time, being cast into the outer darkness like either Shoeless Joe Jackson (took the money and still hit .375) or Pete Rose (RIP but willfully guilty of the cardinal sin of a professional baseball player)? Inconceivable.
Short and sweet and worth the read. In my hometown when I was very young we had a Class D team filled with dreamers of all ages. A handful eventually made it to the Major Leagues and one became Governor of New York. Alas, the league folded just before I would have been old enough to sit in the bleachers by myself. I am still a bit put out by that, but I did play in the same stadium years later. I think the ghosts remain there to this day.
Remember, life is good but only if we make it so. See you next week.
Cutting global health funding is a special kind of ignorant prattle; even if you’re selfish, with air travel, disease from “other” countries can rapidly spread to the United States in less than 24 hours. This timeline is absolutely lit.
I’m guessing that you are speaking of the proposed cuts to USAID which does fund some good causes for keeping everyone health. However, cutting back on the funding for color revolutions would also help everyone in many ways.
Per WHO the global aggregate spending on health (in 2022) was $9.8 trillion, while only a fraction of the $40 billion USAID budged went to health-related projects. Of course, in lowest-income countries one third of the health spending comes from aid, so there are places where it still matters.
On the other hand, Social Health Insurance systems are expanding in the low-middle income countries, and hopefully the emerging multipolar world (provided it ends the neo-colonialism) allows more countries to rise from the lowest to the low-middle income (which is not a logical sentence, but get the idea).
FYI – the link to the review in Part the Second is:
A Review of “In Covid’s Wake”: According to Laptop Class Professors, the Heroes of the Pandemic Were Laptop Class Professors
“The authors of the Great Barrington Declaration prevented fair and honest discussion by constantly spreading fake information. The authors of a new book don’t care at all.”
Another great Friday afternoon coffee break! Thank you.
Part the third:
I had seen the nature paper on whole body pet scans to detect SARS-CoV2. A great advance. However I wonder exactly what they detected. To my reading it is an epitope of the spike protein. Did they detect intact spike? Intact SARS-CoV2? Viable SARS-CoV2?
I look forward to their next publication.
Have mercy, I can’t really even grok your questions let alone the Nature thing. I learned what epitopes are from unacceptablejessica, and on that basis I assume the answer to your question may be simply…”SARS-CoV2″? Re the others you suggest I don’t grok their significance as far as what the tomography’s looking for. I have no freaking idea what “longitudinal” refers to in the actual piece’s summary…except that the printout amounts to a head to toe or hip to knee or whatever to whatever 2 dimensional representation? I assume “spike injection” means they put in spikes, not the whole virus. But the article IMO should have been more clear on that.
It took me many, many, many years to get an inkling of a realization I’m still not a hundred percent sure about: Scholars don’t go to pains to frame their points in language that’ll survive changes in colloquialisms. Whitehead I know for example advanced some very, very valuable ideas…but when it came to his own metaphysical tangents, he’s the #1 example of this. And, being into math, one would have thought he’d have been more careful. It’s the same thing with Husserl; the math background should have enabled him also to do it, and the whole thrust of what he aimed to do in philosophy itself! Admittedly with Husserl I’ve struggled through fewer statements he wrote himself [and of course they had to be translated], so I can’t really swear so far he’s all that guilty in general. It’s these guys that have torqued me out, Dean, not so much you at all.
And my apologies to everyone else as well, had to vent. That “…Global Engine of Harm…” piece does have me thinking, though, about what solid communication’s up against in the present moment.
When I read a sentence like this in an article (“with each passing day of Trump v2.0 it gets harder to keep up”), I am prepared to dismiss much of what I read. I my agree that many of Trump’s actions are disagreeable, but actions of previous admins have been just as bad, if not worse. For example, 3.5 years ago no one spoke about not being able to find a doctor. This discussion is on NPR radio right now. That surely is a paramount issue for everyone and has nearly nothing to do with Trump nor Republicans. I enjoy this new approach as a vehicle for learning and debate, but don’t show your cards too soon. Respectfully, thank you.
“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history.”
When team Trump shuts down NPR, maybe you’ll re-evaluate your scale of egregious behavior.
Art, actually, shutting down NPR would be a great relief. An example and evidence of NPRs unacceptable bias in news coverage, NPR’s President and Chief Executive Officer Katherine Maher – Greene, during an interview before congress, pointed to NPR’s refusal to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story because “we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions”. A clear example of the worthlessness of NPR’s supposed “news coverage”.
Maher: Our reverence for the truth might be a distraction that is getting in the way of finding common ground and getting things done
Maher on Trump: a fascist and a deranged racist sociopath
Wait, are you saying that no one could find a doctor 3.5 years ago because of Biden like that was official policy and therefore comparable?
You either have lost your mind or have no sense of proportion whatsoever.
This is far from a complete list.
You are the one who is not paying attention, and you put your foot in mouth and chew by claiming the reverse. And you are totally out of line to criticize KLG with a lame and lazy Trump defense.
I spend way too much of my time trying to keep up with everything that is happening right now and, even with the aggregation resources I’m linking to below, I find it almost impossible.
2025 Donald J. Trump Executive Orders. In his first 68 days, Trump has issued 103 Executive Orders. During Biden’s entire term in office, he issued a total of 162.
The Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse is currently tracking 177 legal challenges to the Trump administration’s actions and justsecurity.org’s Litigation Tracker is tracking 151.
I do not recall anything like this ever happening in my lifetime. If you could point me to anything similar happening during the first 100 days of a previous administration, I’d greatly appreciate it.
“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history.”
I read The Great Barrington Declaration. It was a response to lockdowns. It’s greatest sin, imo, was misunderstanding or refusing to acknowledge that Covid is an airborne pathogen. Instead of cleaning our hands we need to clean our noses and build or buy HEPA filters. Masking should have been encouraged but with real science and emphasis on how they work….basically Lambert/Yves/NC should have been in charge of our Covid response.
The GBD was closer to reality that most people wanted to inhabit. We lived through the one created by the PTB and well we have Trump again.
I am so far disappointed by RFK Jr. I remain hopeful that he will focus on removing toxins from our food chain but I am frustrated by the Trump admins attack on research funding. We need more basic research not less BUT we need more research on science not gender ideology…this has allowed the Trump admins to attack institutions that caved to a fantasy.
Thank you Kevin. Nicely put together.
This Coffee Break comes from KLG, not Kevin.
Something for all scientists to keep in mind, as noted recently by Adam Tooze (see his Chartbook 365):
“Raising the banner of science against the ignorant vandals in the Trump administration is good politics but it does not relieve science of the need to explain why science could be taken hostage in the way it has been.
What we have to reckon with is the unsettlement of the institutional, political, and cultural location of US big Science. It cannot escape entanglement with society and politics. It has lost its innocence.
A further corollary is that those who “innocently” invoke science as an ultimate instance of authority are themselves engaged in a power game.”
And all power games tend to become quite vicious on all sides.
Arrogance and Stupidity often reach the point of insanity and that is what this article demonstrates.
I went through Chemo in early 2020 for stage 4 Lymphoplasmocytic Lymphoma, five treatments, five trips to the ER, 5 days in ICU after the second treatment, with an HAI.
That treatment was not available in 2015.
And I am still in remission.
The USA is demolishing what is left of Public Health and one whole hell of a lot of people will suffer and die ugly deaths as a result…but it will be very profitable until the total collapse of the system.
Which is very likely to happen well before Trump’s term ends.
Seems that the US has entered the Age of the Ideologues. And that instead of having medical professionals in charge of health and medicine, you have people like Bhattacharya and Dr. Oz and RFK jr being selected to do so instead. Bhattacharya never practiced medicine, Dr. Oz gave wildly wrong recommendations at the beginning of the Pandemic and RFK Jr is just a lawyer who believes that genocide is OK and vaccines are bad, m’kay? None of those three are fit to have such high posts but it is because of their public profiles that they were selected. Hard to decide if they are actually true-believer ideologues or whether they are simply hucksters on the make. It may be that medical advances will now be done by other countries such as China. Will China, come to think of it, seek to recruit suddenly unemployed medical researchers in the US? I could see it happening and will the Trump government seek to stop them because patriotism? I wonder what historians will write of this period but I suspect that it will not be complimentary. And there are still nealry four years to go with this mob.
I get the impression that we’re going to get a Jackpot, but without the “science is popping” feature.
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I suppose at least one long-term benefit of the neglect of COVID prevention in the young is that there will be selective pressure on the genome; perhaps future generations will have a larger proportion of the population that is less susceptible to the CV.
(intended to be snark, but I’m not sure that it isn’t descriptive, along the lines of ‘however cynical one gets, the reality is always worse’)
There is an article covering a recent Stipulated Order covering CDC research gaps and legal issues about vaccines during the baby’s first six months. Plots thicken. More heat, eventually more light?
I once was patiently sitting in a doctors office waiting room…and strangely like all doctors waiting rooms there was an annoying huge tv on, and with it all of the bizarre, abnormal nonsene that goes with daytiime tv in these the US of A….trying to ignore the tv sight and sound was impossible..I even tried to mute the sound, but the switch was on the back of the tv which was high on a wall…and so just when I thought it couldnt get any worse…it did…when that idiot and shyster Dr. Oz and his “program” came on…why it was on is another enigma…the “show” was simply all grotesque advertising…I literally begged to get out of that waiting room…and now this goof is in charge of a major federal department…there is, quite literally, nothing left to say except, we have lost…
I don’t go anywhere that I may have to wait more than 5 minutes without my Bluetooth headphones and my phone so that I can shut out that sort of nonsense and listen to podcasts instead. I used to bring a book, but the prevalence of ambient noise now is such that I can’t concentrate well enough to read properly.
I despise these TVs in waiting rooms! There is a gadget you can get that turns off all TVs, which I’ve often thought of purchasing, We actually wore out the mute button on our home remote.
I don´t know KLG. Surely much of your criticism has great merit. On the other hand it is nothing but a fact that in 1986 congress passed a law to eliminate the potential financial liability of vaccine manufacturers due to vaccine injury claims to ensure a stable market supply of vaccines. The reason then being that pharma companies had stopped producing vaccines because of court granted vaccine injury claims. Whatever the merit of this act might have been in 1986 Big Pharma used this exemption (as well as the revolving door with the regulatory agencies) to extend the childhood vaccine schedule from 12 shots with 8 diseases to an unbelievable 54 shots for 16 diseases. This is surely a world record and many times more than my own children had who grew up in Germany. It is high time to have a look at what is happening.
About vaccines and cancer from the point of view of Big Pharma: the beauty of vaccines against cancer is that you can´t prove a negative. Just one example: all over the Western world doctors are being hectored to administer a vaccine against cervical cancer. The problem is only that most of the vaccinees are in their teens and cervical cancer doesn´t appear until much later in life. As the vaccine has been started to be applied in 2009 we will not know whether a girls who got a shot in 2009 will have a lesser chance of contracting cervical cancer for several decades on.
What is known though is that there are serious adverse events recorded in the VAERS data base. Here a study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405844022028031 What for? We will know in several decades.
I’ve been listening to a couple of pretty interesting podcasts by James Montague doing promo for his new book ‘Engulfed’ which is about Saudi soft power thru ‘Sportswashing’, although Montague avoids that term due to its anodyne nature.
Seems unrelated, but in the interviews Montague has touched on questions of western hypocrisy and, more pointedly, perceptions of western hypocrisy in the ‘Global South’. He makes the point that while there’s plenty of justifiable censure for KSA, in the global south the soft power projection is working and making KSA seem benevolent.
One wonders whether the rescinding of money for beneficial programmes in these places, especially obviously good things like HIV funding, might have an impact on these trends going forward, particularly if (as Kev suggested above) other nations fill the void left by the USA, and what the wider geopolitical consequences of that might be going forward (in the chronological sense, if not a generally progressive sense). It’s hard to imagine the US’ enormous soft power ever being eroded but who knows.
I work in the field of cancer research, though in the IT sector (i.e. a supporting roll) and can confirm the cloud hanging over research funding. In the name of discretion I will not name the institution, but as of now we are looking at a $400 million in NIH funding cuts, which 70% of our research budget. As we are also an oncology-focused hospital, this represents a huge blow. Right now the court orders are what are keeping us whole. The org administration has been projecting a cautious attitude, but it’s clear that big of a blow to our budget would likely kill the org, or if it could survive would only be a shell waiting for better times.
One last thing, to illustrate KLG’s point that cancer is not one disease, but a thousand. From IT sector end of the stick, research means databases. From the angle of a relational database cancer is divided into “sites,” which are a technical way of describing the human body. Each “site” is more commonly described as an organ, or often even a particular part of an organ. And many parts of organs can have more than one type of cancer. So there are hundreds of sites, and the number of diseases which can form is easily over a thousand. From the database perspective this ultimately means specific sites have specific variables to track that do not apply to other sites. In other words cancer research involves vary large datasets with thousands of variables, which also change over time as more is learned.
It’s a complicated field and, while it may lead to dead ends, also drives the breakthroughs.Make what you will of it, but measures seeking “market efficiency” or whatever else ultimately just kills the host.