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A Simple Partial Explanation for Trump's War on Science [1]
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Date: 2025-07-09
Since he took office six months ago, Trump has waged a multi-front war on science. In part, this is because science has a nasty habit of insisting on facts over fantasies — both political fantasies, which upsets Republicans, and religious fantasies, which upsets fundamentalists. The scientific method, simply put, is diametrically opposed to autocracy (just ask Galileo, for example, who ran afoul of the Catholic Church for insisting that the earth moved around the sun because his scientific experiments convinced him of that fact). And of course the scientific reality of climate change threatens to reduce the profits of the fossil fuel industry, so they pay a lot of money to politicians to suppress that.
One particular area where Trump has suppressed science is in medicine in general, and cancer (along with vaccines) in particular:
Bernie Sanders highlighted this in May: NEWS: Sanders Releases Report Documenting Trump’s War on Science
“Since January, Trump has launched an unprecedented, illegal and outrageous attack on science and scientists. Trump is not only denying scientific truth but actively seeking to undermine it,” said Sanders. “That is beyond unacceptable. This is a war we cannot allow Trump to win. Far too many lives are at stake.” The report finds that Trump officials effectively cut $2.7 billion in National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding in the first three months of 2025 – including a 31 percent cut to cancer research through March, compared to the same timeframe last year.
Why medicine? It’s not especially political (except to the likes of the sewage swimmer RFKJr). And why cancer? A CBS report asks: "When is cancer political?" Medical researchers, patients decry Trump admin's layoffs, budget cuts:
Lobbying for cancer research, [Dr. George Weiner, a cancer specialist in Iowa for more than 35 years] says, used to be like pushing on an open door. "Most of the time when I've come, I've met with Democrats and Republicans, and we talked about the bipartisan support for cancer research," Weiner said. "This is the first time that I felt there was an existential crisis in our ability to make the type of progress that I see in front of us."
A possible answer occurred to me while I was in the middle of reading The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee (a Pulitzer-prize winning book I highly recommend): Trump is doing it for the money.
Cancer treatment is expensive. Cancer research is even more expensive. Put that together with Trump’s lifetime habit of refusing to spend money, of stiffing contractors who have already performed, of breaking contracts whenever he feels like it, and it all leads to the conclusion that Trump doesn’t mind if there is a cure for cancer — but he wants somebody else to pay for it. “Somebody” in this case meaning other countries.
Europe, Canada, China — these are all countries and regions that are investing more — often more than the US — in cancer research. And more and more, they are poaching US scientists that Trump is kicking off the government payroll and denying or revoking their grants. Researchers warn U.S. is on the ‘precipice’ of brain drain as Trump cuts federal grants. And American science to soon face its largest brain drain in history. And U.S. Scientists Warn That Trump’s Cuts Will Set Off a Brain Drain.
So far as I know, Trump hasn’t lifted a finger (or a tongue) to stop or even complain about this brain drain. If anything, he appears to be encouraging it. He gets rids of the experts who, like Anthony Fauci, were willing to tell him when he was wrong. He plays to his base who never liked or trusted real experts. And if these researchers do make scientific advances on someone else’s dime, he expects to reap the benefits (at least for himself if, say, he should get cancer).
Republicans have gotten into the habit of wrecking things knowing that Democrats care enough to fix them. This is just Trump’s extension of that pattern to other countries.
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