Photo: Adam Glanzman/Bloomberg/Getty Images
It’s not an exaggeration to say that science is under attack in the U.S. The Trump administration’s preliminary budget outlines a $40 billion cut to the Department of Health and Human Services, including funding reductions of 40 percent to the National Institutes of Health and 44 percent to the Centers for Disease Control. In late March, DOGE announced planned reductions of 20,000 workers at HHS, including 1,200 jobs at the NIH and 3,500 jobs at the FDA. Many of those who have already been fired are the people responsible for evaluating applications for new drugs and vaccines. On Jay Bhattacharya’s first day as head of the NIH, several division chiefs were also removed, including the country’s top infectious-disease official.
Since March, the NIH has also terminated nearly 800 previously awarded research grants. One area under especially intense scrutiny is vaccine research and development. According to Nature, 45.5 percent of NIH research grants that included the search term “vaccine hesitancy,” for example, have been canceled. That’s hardly surprising: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s new Health secretary, is a well-known vaccine skeptic. His appointment has emboldened anti-vaccine rhetoric and begun shaping policies that are already having real-world consequences for industry, academia, medical professionals, and citizens — including in the response to an ongoing measles outbreak that has claimed three lives.
We spoke to a professor at a major research university (who asked to remain anonymous) about leading a lab that studies vaccines and what her life is like right now.
What does your lab do, and how has your work changed since the Trump administration took over?
I perform early phase-one and -two clinical trials of primarily vaccines, but also therapeutics, mostly against mosquito-borne diseases. My lab did pivot during the pandemic to perform phase-three trials of COVID vaccines because we felt that was very important work that needed to get done. I’m not doing any COVID vaccine studies now, but I do have colleagues who are involved in a network that was designed to make second-generation COVID vaccines. For now, they’re continuing that work. They haven’t been told that that network has been terminated, but it might be.
One of the things my lab is now having to do is very carefully go through all of our budgets for the next 6 to 12 months to see how much funding we’re going to have and whether or not we have to think about reducing people’s salaries to make the funding go longer. One of our funding sources is a contract with the NIH to do studies of vaccines or products that come out of the NIH Laboratory of Viral Diseases. We have been told that there won’t be any more task orders, which is how that contract is funded. So we’re looking for other funding sources, but we’re also trying to make the funding that we have last as long as possible.
Another thing we’re finding is that we’re having a difficult time recruiting for some of our studies. I don’t know if that’s a symptom of what’s going on or something broader. It could be that the general anxiety people are feeling means they are just so focused on their day-to-day that they can’t think about volunteering for clinical trials. We’re looking into that, trying to figure out what’s going on.
There hasn’t been any impact at my lab yet for the actual research we’re doing. But I can say that my colleagues at NIH have not been able to order things, because apparently all of the procurement staff was fired. So they’ve had lots of delays getting supplies, which has affected their ability to do some of their experiments.
What is morale like in your lab?
People are still coming to work, and they’re working hard. But they are very anxious. They’re worried about their jobs and they’re stressed out about what’s going on — not just at work but with the entire political situation. They’re very unhappy with the way these funding cuts have been implemented and with the destruction of science this administration is doing.
Our students are also very nervous, especially our foreign students. A lot of them aren’t planning to travel back to their home countries because they’re concerned they won’t be able to reenter the United States.
Has the political climate affected future plans for the lab?
I’m pretty sure I’m never going to get another NIH vaccine grant. There’s also reluctance on the part of vaccine manufacturers to even conduct trials. We don’t anticipate there’s going to be a lot of vaccine funding during this administration. Luckily, some of the work we do is evaluating drugs, so we’re thinking that we’re likely going to have to shift more toward therapeutics as opposed to vaccines.
Right now, I still have two NIH grants that are active and have not been canceled. One is for a drug, not a vaccine, so I think that one will be fine. The other one is looking at whether a certain vaccine protects against a different virus. That grant ends at the end of August. If it’s not renewed, then we won’t be able to analyze the results, because we won’t have enough people enrolled to do the data analysis. If we have to just throw away the data, to me, that’s unethical. It’s a complete waste of money and a waste of all of the specimens that the volunteers have given, and all of their effort and time.
Some of my colleagues are in worse positions. Two have had all of their COVID grants cut. Another researcher I’ve worked with in the past, Ralph Baric at UNC Chapel Hill, was very involved in COVID and testified about it before Congress. He was just informed that all of his grant funding — every single NIH grant that he has, whether it’s related to COVID or not — would be cut. That’s simply because he spoke up during COVID. I’m sure he and his university will fight this, but how long he can go on if he doesn’t get funding is another question.
What has it been like to see vaccine skepticism growing?
It’s heartbreaking. Unfortunately, vaccines are a victim of their own success because people don’t remember what it was like before them. But it wasn’t that long ago. My mother used to tell me about not going to the swimming pool in the summer, because of fear of polio, and I’ve seen many people in my travels who have the physical effects of polio. I’m sorry — I get emotional talking about this.
What’s your biggest fear?
My biggest concern is that a lot of people, mostly children, are going to die because of these actions. There’s going to be an outbreak of either a new infectious disease or an old infectious disease that people aren’t being vaccinated for.
I’m also concerned that, in the long term, we’re not going to have scientists, because who’s going to go into this career when you can just be fired for no reason, when you can’t get funding or grants and when your work is completely unappreciated and even condemned? It will also take decades to undo the damage to the FDA, CDC, and NIH. As a result, we will not be biomedical leaders in the world anymore. We will see that ceded to China and Europe. We are going to fall very far behind, and it’s going to affect our long-term productivity and ability to find new drugs, vaccines, and cures for diseases.
My biggest fear for my own lab is about the people I employ. I can retire any time, but I have 20 people who work for me. What’s going to happen to them? Quite a lot of them are young — will they be able to find new jobs? That’s my biggest concern.
How has all of this affected your personal life and mental health?
I am in a constant state of anxiety and frustration. I’m very short-tempered with people. I’m just like, How can this be happening?
But I try to find some joy every day, because I have to. I have my dog, who is 15, and I try to go on long walks every day to sort of de-stress.
I also do what I can to fight back. I make daily phone calls to my senators. I tell them, “People are dying. Do your freaking job.” I write letters, too, and support people who I think are going to make a difference. And I try not to get too depressed, because we have to keep fighting. We have to keep resisting this. We can’t let them win. My hope is that we get through this with our democracy intact, and that we recognize that things have to change.
Do you have insight on whether the political climate is impacting vaccine development, at both the basic science and the consumer level?
The NIH does science that a pharmaceutical company would not do, to make sure we have the best vaccines possible. Then they license that technology to different companies in the United States and around the world. That’s how products are developed. For every $1 spent at the NIH, the federal government gets a $2 return. Now those studies probably just aren’t going to be done.
There’s one vaccine I’ve been working on since 1999, for example, that the NIH funded some 30 trials for. No company would have paid for that initial work. Now, Merck has licensed the technology from the NIH for this vaccine, and they’re currently conducting trials. They still have probably three more years of trials before they can submit an application to the FDA for approval. It’ll be interesting to see what kind of reception they get from the FDA when they’re ready to submit.
In general, though, the pharmaceutical industry is pulling back on vaccine research because they’re concerned that, with the administration’s attitude toward vaccines, they’re going to essentially get punished if they move forward. So they’re cutting back on their vaccine portfolios and on doing new studies on vaccines. I’m also hearing from companies that they are looking to do vaccine trials outside of the U.S., if possible, because they feel they will get a fairer and faster review. This could very much potentially impact whether these products come to market in the U.S., because anything that’s going to be used in the U.S. has to be evaluated by the FDA.
What is the greatest threat to vaccine science right now?
No. 1 is Robert Kennedy Jr. His thinking is dangerous, and he’s completely unqualified. He doesn’t understand how you do good, unbiased scientific research, or how regulation in this country works around drugs and medical devices. He also clearly does not believe in vaccines and does not understand the science around vaccines, how vaccines are evaluated, or the safety follow-up that continues after a vaccine is licensed. He doesn’t understand or appreciate, either, the hundreds of millions of lives that have been saved by vaccines, and he continues to spread mis- and disinformation around vaccine safety.
He is the head of HHS, and yet he continues to spout untested, unproven therapies and has only given a very lukewarm recommendation for the measles vaccine to stop the ongoing measles outbreak that is spreading across the country. Three people have died. His response is criminal, in my opinion.
Under Kennedy, HHS has made major, devastating cuts to NIH, FDA, and CDC. They’ve also removed people with great expertise from the leadership of all of these agencies and filled them, frankly, with people who are incompetent and have no experience. They don’t know how these agencies work, and they don’t understand the importance of the work that the people in these agencies do.
In the short term, I think his comments that discourage people from getting vaccines are much more harmful than the funding cuts, which will have more long-term impacts.
Did you imagine this level of devastation when Trump took office?
No. And I think the people we have to blame are the Republicans in Congress, who confirmed Kennedy and others, and who have stood silent while these things have happened to our country. They are as much to blame as Trump. They’re just sitting back and watching it burn.
When it comes to the state of vaccines, what does the average person need to know right now?
Understand that this is really bad. It will affect your health and the health of the people you love. You need to tune in and be aware of what’s happening, even though it’s really depressing.
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