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THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION IS OBJECTIVELY PRO-CANCER  
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Ryan Cooper
April 23, 2025
The American Prospect
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_ America used to have the best medical research system in the world.
Elon Musk and RFK Jr. are ripping it to shreds. _

“United in Blue,” a flag installation organized by the
organization Fight Colorectal Cancer, is seen on the National Mall in
Washington, March 14, 2025., Bryan Dozier/NurPhoto via AP

 

Amid the chaos of Donald Trump’s misrule—what with his on-again,
off-again trade war causing a sharp slide in the dollar, a rise in
American borrowing costs, accelerating inflation, and possibly a
severe recession—his attack on basic medical research is getting
less attention. Elon Musk’s DOGE goons have slashed federal grants
across the country, and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert
F. Kennedy Jr. is putting through further sweeping layoffs and budget
cuts. Meanwhile, Trump’s war on immigrants is targeting top medical
researchers.

In particular, cancer research and treatment in America is being
gored. Development of promising diagnostics and treatments has been
called into question or frozen, clinical trials are being halted,
and—unless the cuts are stopped—hospitals around the country will
be bankrupted. Many Americans will die soon, and many more will die in
future who could have been saved.

Let me start with immigration. America has the most advanced medical
research system in the world, which has attracted brilliant
researchers from many countries. The flip side of that fact, however,
is that system _depends_ to a great degree on highly skilled
immigrants. In any previous administration, the legal status of such
people would be all but sacrosanct—people might argue about
deporting unauthorized construction workers, but not a handful of
world-class scientists with legal visas or green cards.

Until now. For instance, the cancer scientist Kseniia Petrova, a
Russian immigrant who worked at Harvard’s renowned Kirschner Lab,
has been in a Louisiana ICE prison for two months now, and is facing
deportation to Russia because she allegedly lied to a border control
officer about carrying frog embryos for research purposes. Not only is
this likely false—she told NBC News
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she _did_ tell the officers the truth—but the usual penalty for
such a piddling violation is a $500 fine, knocked down to $50 for a
first offense. Instead, ICE revoked her J-1 visa and threw her in
prison pending a hearing to deport her back to Russia, where she might
easily end up in prison or dead for criticizing the Putin regime.

Petrova is not just any cancer scientist—she is perhaps the
world’s top expert on analyzing the images produced by a new
cutting-edge, ultra-specialized microscope that is being developed to
diagnose cancer cases. Leon Peshkin, Petrova’s manager, told NBC
that the task “requires a unique set of skills because you have to
both be able to work as an embryologist and do applied math, modeling,
data analysis and bioinformatics—all in one package.” Nobody else
in the lab could do what she does, he added.

This and many other stories have spread panic among America’s
scientists, immigrant or otherwise. ICE and CBP goons are clearly
itching for any excuse to imprison, deport, or otherwise harass
immigrants of any kind. White European tourists who normally would
have been casually waved through to their vacations are being locked
up and deported
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preposterous pretexts. If a literally irreplaceable cancer
researcher _at Harvard_ isn’t safe, nobody is safe.
Fully three-quarters
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scientists are considering fleeing to Europe or Canada, per a recent
survey. Scientific conferences—vital for the production and
dissemination of new research—are being canceled or moved to free
countries.

All that will damage America’s cancer research and treatment plenty.
But direct funding is also being slashed. The National Institutes of
Health is by far the largest funder of medical research in the world,
with a budget of almost $48 billion in 2023. Thus far, an
estimated 780 grants
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been canceled outright as of early April, thousands of NIH researchers
have been fired, and as Josh Marshall writes
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Talking Points Memo, the NIH funding pipeline appears to be mostly
frozen because DOGE goons have gummed up the approval process.

As a _Nature_ investigation explains
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primary attack vector for NIH grants seems to be on right-wing
culture-war bugaboos like research into LGBT people, HIV/AIDS
(presumably due to the conservative idea that infection is just
punishment for premarital sex), and anything having to do with
minorities. But vaccines are also a target, particularly the mRNA
technology
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for COVID-19. Kennedy, of course, is an anti-vaccine conspiracy
enthusiast of long standing, and clearly is aiming to ban all vaccines
eventually.

But mRNA is not just useful against COVID or other viruses. This
near-miraculous technology is showing all kinds of promise against
many illnesses, including cancer, because it is so highly adaptable. A
new vaccine against pancreatic cancer—one of the deadliest
types—customized to each individual case is showing great promise
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early trials. But with so much funding being cut all over the place,
and mRNA tech under attack, it’s an open question whether it will
make it to market.

Formal cancer research isn’t immune, either. CBS News reports
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47 projects at the National Cancer Institute have been canceled, with
more coming every day. And the Congressionally Directed Medical
Research Programs (CDMRP), a three-decade-long Defense Department
initiative that funds numerous projects to find cures and treatments
for cancer, was cut by 57 percent
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the Republican-written continuing resolution to fund the government.

Finally, the broad assault on university funding is going to hit
hospitals hard. Both elite research and baseline hospitals are
commonly part of universities across the country. For instance, _The
Harvard Crimson_ estimates
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of Trump’s proposed $9 billion cuts in funding affiliated with
Harvard, $6.2 billion will actually fall on Boston hospitals. It’s
a similar situation
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North Carolina, where the famous Research Triangle is being
bludgeoned.

House Republicans’ proposed cuts to Medicaid that could reach as
high as $880 billion
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a decade—or about 29 percent of the entire program—will hurt
hospitals and other providers even more. Medicaid is the largest
single insurer in the country, and is especially vital in rural,
heavily Trumpy areas. If all these cuts go through, those providers
are going to close down en masse.

Summing it all up: Many of the people who are developing the next
generation of cancer diagnostics and treatments are being run out of
the country, the funding pipeline for research and trials is being
strangled, and the institutions that provide access to existing
treatments are being pummeled. If I were to imagine a plan to ensure
as many Americans as possible die of cancer in future, this is what I
would do.

The abject stupidity of all this is breathtaking. It appears to be the
product, at least in part, of DOGE fascists embracing willfully evil
cruelty for its own sake, and Kennedy’s toxic woo-woo ideology.
Beneath his facade of talking about healthy living and wellness,
Kennedy is actually a eugenicist. He insists that viruses and
bacteria only kill people
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don’t eat healthy and exercise by his lights—essentially rejecting
the germ theory of disease.

It’s an odd position coming from someone who sounds the way he does
because of an unfortunate chronic condition that, ironically enough,
is often caused by measles or mumps
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prevented with vaccines. But just like Pete Hegseth running the
American military through group chats
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his wife and brother, this is the standard for the second Trump
administration: The worst people in the entire country in charge,
ruining everything they touch.

_Ryan Cooper is the Prospect’s managing editor, and author of ‘How
Are You Going to Pay for That?: Smart Answers to the Dumbest Question
in Politics.’ He was previously a national correspondent for The
Week._

_Used with the permission © The American Prospect, Prospect.org
[[link removed]], 2025. All rights reserved. _

_Read the original article at Prospect.org:
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* cancer
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* research
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* budget cuts
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* Trump
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* RFK jr.
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* Elon Musk
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