Editor’s note: The Herald’s editorial board requested an update to “A scientific dark age threatens to undo decades of progress and innovation,” (Herald, Mar. 16) by Black and DiRusso believing it would be of interest to readers.
America’s scientific institutions are under attack – and most people don’t realize how fast it’s already affecting their lives.
The engines of our health, innovation, and economic strength – places like the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Environmental Protection Agency, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and U.S. Department of Agriculture – are being gutted. Not by accident, but by deliberate design. In just the first 100 days of the second Trump administration, sweeping changes have begun dismantling the very foundation of American science.
These moves are not bureaucratic details. They are grinding real-world progress to a halt, killing thousands of jobs, stalling medical breakthroughs and throwing away the global leadership we spent decades building.
Start with the NIH, the world’s premier biomedical research institution. It now faces a proposed 44% budget cut – nearly $18 billion slashed. That means cancer research halted. Alzheimer’s breakthroughs abandoned. Clinical trials for new drugs shelved indefinitely. Up to 22,000 biomedical jobs – scientists, lab techs, project leaders – are on the chopping block. The very people who could cure your future illness are being driven out of the field – or out of the country.
And the cuts don’t stop at medical research. America’s basic scientific engine – the NSF – is grinding to a halt. It has frozen new grants, canceling more than $400 million in research funding. Around 10,000 high-skill STEM jobs are vanishing as academic labs shut down and innovation hubs go dark. Startups built on federally funded discoveries are losing investors. Economic growth slows when discovery does.
At the EPA, the purge is even more brutal. More than 4,000 scientists and environmental experts have been forced out. Entire offices dismantled. Pollution standards gutted. Science-based decision-making replaced with political loyalty tests. These are not bureaucratic changes – they are blows to the air we breathe, the water we drink and the public health we rely on every day.
The CDC, once a global model for public health, has lost more than $11 billion in grants. Over 8,500 public health jobs – disease trackers, emergency responders, public health researchers – are disappearing. Forbidden from exchanging critical data with the World Health Organization, the CDC’s ability to monitor and respond to new pandemics is crippled. When the next health crisis comes – and it will – the American public will pay the price in lives lost.
Even the USDA, often overlooked but vital for food safety and rural innovation, is being hollowed out. Nearly 1,500 USDA scientists and analysts have resigned or been laid off, leaving farmers without updated data on crop resilience, soil health and livestock disease – even as climate threats grow more severe.
This isn’t belt-tightening. It’s deliberate political sabotage. And it’s already costing us dearly.
For every dollar invested, science returns three. It gave us the internet. Global Positioning Systems. Solar energy. Lifesaving drugs. Even the mRNA vaccines that helped end a pandemic. Science doesn’t just serve scientists – it drives about 3% of our GDP and supports hundreds of thousands of good-paying jobs. Every dollar cut is a dollar ripped from America’s future.
Already, Harvard, Columbia and Princeton are suing the federal government over politically motivated freezes in research funding. Smaller colleges, including Fort Lewis College in Durango – the ones serving rural, Indigenous and first-generation students – are negatively impacted by the reduction of funds for undergraduate research. Students lose the hands-on opportunities that once launched global careers. Once-vibrant innovation hubs, from San Diego to Boston, are starting to hollow out.
Meanwhile, China and the European Union are racing ahead. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently warned that America is falling dangerously behind in artificial intelligence – a field poised to dominate the 21st century. Global management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. estimates that ongoing cuts to U.S. science funding could cost our economy $4 trillion over the next decade. That’s not theoretical. That’s real money, real jobs, and real futures – gone.
This should not be a partisan issue. It’s a national survival issue.
Science built America’s economy, cured its diseases, strengthened its military, and secured its global leadership. Without it, we don’t just darken our labs – we darken the very future we’re supposed to be building.
The next 1,400 days will determine the next 40 years.
We must fight now to restore stable, nonpartisan science funding. We must rebuild the NIH, NSF, EPA, USDA and CDC. We must defend every American institution, from Ivy League giants to rural colleges, that keeps the flame of discovery alive.
If we stay silent, we lose more than innovation – we lose the future.
Science made America strong. Only science will keep it that way.
Paul N. Black, Ph.D., is the Charles Bessey professor and chair of Biochemistry (Emeritus) at the University of Nebraska and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Concetta C. DiRusso, Ph.D., is the George Holmes University professor of Biochemistry (Emeritus) at the University of Nebraska and fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Black is a native to Durango and both he and DiRusso have made their home in Durango since 2020.
