The assault on science
High atop the list of things that make America great is its investment in science. A commitment to basic research, led by the federal government, has long made the United States an electromagnet for the smartest people on Earth. It laid the groundwork for the internet. Has planted seeds for explosive economic innovation. Unlocked untapped energy. Enabled, and is increasingly enabling, medical miracles.
All for a relatively piddling $68 billion in 2016, a wee bit more than the single-year increase in the defense budget President Trump is ordering up.
Yet if Trump gets his way, the feds will pull the plug on thousands of vital projects.
The National Institutes of Health, the leading federal medical grantmaker, would suffer an 18% hit — an unprecedented single-year decline.
Discoveries funded by the NIH have deciphered the human genetic code; lowered the cholesterol of millions, via statins, and developed a class of drugs instrumental to turning AIDS from a death sentence into a chronic disease.
They are working as you read this to map the human brain as never before. To pioneer understanding of and therapies for Alzheimer’s disease. And to radically improve cancer treatments that have already saved thousands of lives. Trump would systematically hobble that work. Meantime, Trump would all but eliminate funding for studies on the impact of climate change. Deep cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Agriculture would weaken scientists’ ability to help curb air and water pollution.
The assault couldn’t come at a worse time. America is already at risk of losing its leadership position; for years, the U.S. share of R&D spending has been falling, with China, Japan, South Korea, India and Singapore gaining as we slip.
Meantime, four in 10 U.S. colleges — and half of all graduate schools — this year report declines in the number of international students, who often go on to study science, technology and engineering.
That phenomenon, no doubt triggered largely by Trump’s anti-immigrant fearmongering, will only be exacerbated by a freshly expressed hostility toward research.
To those who protest, “If it’s so important, the private sector will pay for it,” wrong: The very nature of most basic science is that it doesn’t pay short-term dividends. And private philanthropy, while essential, can’t do nearly enough.
Democrats and Republicans alike in Congress get that. It is their responsibility now to enlighten a President who doesn’t. Or just defeat him.