Opinion | America First? Not When It Comes to Your Health.

This is Camila. She’s trying to figure out how cancer spreads across the body. David here is trying to cure H.I.V. And Rachael, she’s trying to find new treatments for childhood brain cancer. Or at least they were. “The Trump administration has so far terminated more than $1 billion in grants for the National Institutes of Health.” “It has fired over 1,300 employees.” “1,700 canceled awards.” “Wow.” Thousands of scientists have been forced to freeze their lifesaving research. “We’ve had all of our cancer-related research grants terminated.” “I don’t even know if my lab is going to exist next year. I don’t know. And you and the people you love will suffer the consequences in the years to come. “Ultimately, it’s people who will get cancer in 10, 20 or 30 years who will really pay the price for these cuts.” “We’re going to get to the cure for cancer and Alzheimer’s and so many other things. We’re so close to doing something great.” We were close. But with these brutal cuts, Trump just pushed us further away. Because here’s the thing. So many new drugs originate from U.S. government research, not Big Pharma, including those made overseas. Do you know someone with diabetes? “Type 2 diabetes? Discover the Ozempic Tri-Zone.” Prostate cancer? “Xtandi is a prescription medicine used to treat men with prostate cancer.” H.I.V.? “Descovy for PrEP is a once-daily prescription medicine that helps protect against H.I.V.” America is the world champion at inventing new drugs. Our government spends more on medical research than any other country. The result: More than half of all new drugs are developed in the United States, which means American patients get them first. “We developed better therapies for treating H.I.V./AIDS in 1996, and the American patients benefited from them in 1996. The Chinese patients did not benefit from them until 2002.” For decades, we attracted the best scientists, gained early access to cutting-edge clinical trials, and most importantly, saved lives at incredible value for money. “It’s incredibly cheap to do research at a university because — I shouldn’t say this, but our graduate students and our postdocs, they’re really underpaid. Research at a university is a steal.” And despite all of that, Sebastian’s studies to map the human brain have been frozen. “Think about Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. Think about schizophrenia and autism. The dollar cost of these diseases is huge, and the emotional cost of these diseases is even huger. Can we wait?” Apparently, Trump thinks we can. “Just listen to some of the appalling waste we have already identified.” His cuts have been broad, blunt and politically motivated. “No reason was provided other than the fact that we work at Columbia University.” And sometimes, just plain stupid. “$8 million for making mice transgender.” “There’s no such thing as transgender mice. We study mice that have transgenic mutations in them.” “Everybody can understand the idea of downsizing —” “But we are facing a 40 percent budget cut.” “That’s more like butchery.” “There’s no Plan B.” The pharmaceutical industry isn’t motivated to invest in the risky long-term research that produces the greatest breakthroughs. “Government-funded research is often in the precommercial stage. You can’t make money off of it yet. Once we know that something is going to work, then, of course, the private sector can work on it and make big profits.” And the damage from these cuts cannot be easily undone. “It’s as if you took your baseball team and you not only quit the game but you basically got rid of all your players and then two years later, you decide that you want to get back in the game. You need to build a team all over again.” “Why are we tearing that down? I simply do not understand that.” Long after Trump is gone, we’ll all still be facing the tragic reality he has created. “You’ll start to see other places will have therapies, will have technologies that we will not.” “It will make a difference if your child or grandchild gets cancer.” “Are you willing for them to have to wait or perhaps die because the therapy for them is delayed?” “The ideas and the technologies that are being destroyed today, in this moment, some of them irreversibly, those are the cures that would have been present 20 years from now. And now we won’t even know what we’ve lost.” [MUSIC PLAYING]