What does an illiterate ignorant real estate developer understand about science? Nothing. What he understands is exacting vengeance against scientists whom, though they propulse the US to the forefront of scientific research, he perceives as having somehow ruined his first term with this Covid thing, as personified by Dr. Anthony Fauci who just benefited from a Biden pardon. The barbarian in the White House can't get back at Fauci, so he unleashed his barbarity against the best scientific institutions in the world. Also, his equally barbaric illiterate base does not believe in science. They prefer Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s voodoo bullshit, religious crap from the Bronze Age and such other degenerate forms of human beliefs.
When no advances in cancer become a reality, remember that you voted for a criminal idiot. When no new leads for drugs come out of the laboratories funded by the US government, the CEOs of the pharmaceutical companies will regret kissing the dirty ass of one Donald Dumb.
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Health researchers alarmed as Trump administration pauses travel, communications
Dan Diamond,Lena H. Sun,Carolyn Y. Johnson and Mark Johnson, (c) 2025 , The Washington Post
Fri, January 24, 2025
No meetings of cancer researchers to discuss issuing new federal grants. No new scientific reports on lessons from fighting avian flu. Not even private briefings for congressional staffers who have questions about health agency operations.
Health officials and experts said this week they are reeling after the new Trump administration on Tuesday abruptly halted external communication at the Department of Health and Human Services and its agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health. The pause extends through Feb. 1, according to a memo obtained by The Washington Post. The Trump administration also issued a second order indefinitely halting the travel of HHS personnel, according to a second memo obtained by The Post.
The Trump administration Thursday defended the holds as a part of the presidential transition and said it had provided flexibility for urgent communications.
“HHS has issued a pause on mass communications and public appearances that are not directly related to emergencies or critical to preserving health,” Stefanie Spear, an HHS spokesperson and longtime ally of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Donald Trump’s pick to run HHS, said in a statement. “This is a short pause to allow the new team to set up a process for review and prioritization. There are exceptions for announcements that HHS divisions believe are mission critical, but they will be made on a case-by-case basis.”
Some health officials told The Post they had been approved to post data updates considered mission-critical, such as case counts of bird flu.
The decisions to pause communications and travel, which were not publicly announced - and which extended to reporters’ inquiries, with HHS media offices not responding to requests for comment for two days - trickled out as agency staff members and health-care workers across the country have tried to make sense of suddenly canceled briefings, updates and events.
In interviews, health-care personnel described panicked efforts to learn if their programs had been affected, with some speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the news media or feared retribution from the new administration.
Victoria Seewaldt, chair of population sciences at City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center, was scheduled to lead an NIH study section Thursday that was abruptly canceled, without guidance on when it would be rescheduled. The session was scheduled to review grants focused on cancers and other chronic illnesses.
Seewaldt has spent two decades serving on study sections, which review research proposals and rate them based on their scientific merit. She said there is no precedent for the pause.
“Everything is basically in chaos. And frankly everyone is terrified,” Seewaldt said. “We’ve never seen anything like this. This is like a meteor just crashed into all of our cancer centers and research areas.”
The CDC canceled a monthly call scheduled for this coming Monday with the entire clinical laboratory community - lab leaders, pathologists and laboratory scientists across the country, including at large health systems and hospitals - that had been intended to share updates about emerging threats and testing changes.
“It is hard to imagine a worse time to prohibit federal officials from communicating directly with the clinical laboratory community and the public health workforce,” one laboratory leader said, noting the slew of winter viruses and increasing risk of avian flu. “Viruses don’t care who the CDC director or HHS secretary is, or what spin newly appointed political leadership want to put on their agencies’ efforts.”
Some former Trump officials have defended the halt as the necessary work of a presidential transition.
Pausing communications is “extremely appropriate,” David Mansdoerfer, who served as a senior health official in the first Trump administration, wrote in a message.
“The Biden administration was trying to spend every dollar and push every policy it possibly could up until noon on Monday,” Mansdoerfer wrote. “A two week hiatus for review and reflection will allow the incoming team to reset expectations and potentially reverse anything that was done during the days leading up to transition.”
Health workers and researchers said they were prepared for some review, but described moments of disorganization as the Trump administration’s directive took effect.
Christopher Fox, the CEO of the International Association for Dental, Oral, and Craniofacial Research, said he logged on to a long-scheduled meeting of dental researchers hosted by NIH on Wednesday morning only to hear from a federal official that communications had been paused and to stand by. More than 40 minutes later, he said, another NIH official joined the broadcast and said the session was postponed. He learned later that a second session, at which researchers would make decisions on awarding NIH grants, had also been postponed.
“It’s really shutting down the research pipeline in our country,” Fox said in an interview Thursday, calling the news “devastating” and noting that dental researchers had spent months preparing for the meeting. “Hopefully, it will be temporary.”
The NIH is the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world, awarding about $35 billion in fiscal year 2023 to support scientific research.
Other delays were seen across federal websites and publications. The CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, which provides clinical updates to health-care personnel and had published at its regular cadence after Trump’s first inauguration, did not appear at its regular time Thursday. This week’s edition was set to include updates on avian flu.
The list of postponed meetings has continued to grow, such as a planned meeting next week of the president’s council on how to fight antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Federal researchers contacted by The Post on Thursday said they were still seeking answers about whether their workshops and discussions with external experts could proceed.
Outside organizations said they were affected by the pause, too. A summit of health information technology leaders scheduled for next week was postponed because “nearly all of our speakers have informed us that they will be unable to participate,” the organization, AFCEA Bethesda, wrote in a message obtained by The Post.
William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, said he was worried about the ramifications in the U.S. scientific community but also abroad, as researchers in other countries await U.S. decisions on grants and other updates.
“This will slow the development of scientific research,” Schaffner said.
The move caught some Trump officials by surprise, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal operations. One person tapped for a senior HHS role in the new administration said they were not briefed on the extent of the pause, and they would not have supported some aspects of it.
Carrie Wolinetz, who previously served as a senior NIH official and is now a senior principal at Lewis-Burke Associates, a government relations consulting firm, said pauses in certain activities routinely occur when presidential administrations transition.
“Freezes and pauses in general are pretty common in transitions, particularly on communications, just as the new administration is getting their ducks in a row in messaging and putting people in place,” Wolinetz said, adding that the length of the pause would affect how disruptive it would be. “For now, it’s too soon to tell - we just have to wait and see.”
Many staff members said they first learned of the policy in a briefing with Spear on Tuesday morning. The policy was further detailed in a Tuesday memo by Dorothy Fink, the HHS acting secretary.
“Refrain from publicly issuing any document (e.g., regulation, guidance, notice, grant announcement) or communication (e.g., social media, websites, press releases, and communication using listservs) until it has been reviewed and approved by a Presidential appointee,” Fink wrote.
Fink’s memo instructs staff members who believe they have information that should not be subjected to the pause, such as matters of “critical health,” to submit requests that would allow for “expedited release.” Fink did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The first Trump administration in 2017 also immediately paused some communications at federal agencies. Federal officials who spoke to The Post this week said that they understood why some additional review might accompany a presidential transition - but that they are rattled by the scope of the pause and the ramifications, particularly after Trump campaigned on pledges to weaken the civil service.
The decision to halt communications has alarmed some career civil servants who remember how political appointees in the first Trump administration pressured health-care personnel to align with Trump’s own messages about the coronavirus.
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Joel Achenbach and Rachel Roubein contributed to this report.
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