RFK Jr., the former environmental champion, now head of head of the Department of Health and Human Services, declared just last year that climate change is “real, manmade, and an existential threat.” Yet in late March, all research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) — part of HHS — studying the effects of climate change on human health was canceled.

This is in line with a policy to end any research “not in line with the Administration’s policies” or which is considered “woke” like gender identity, LGBTQ issues, diversity, equity and inclusion, and vaccine hesitancy.

The NIH does not make policies to fight climate change. That’s up to the EPA which has, according to its website, begun the “biggest deregulation in U.S. history,” scuttling virtually all rules aimed at addressing climate change, regulating toxic chemicals. Its new mission is “energy independence” and bringing back automaker jobs to the U.S.

Included in the NIH cuts will be research on the relationship of higher temperatures to mosquito-borne illness, Lyme disease, reproductive health, the body’s response to air pollution and the amount of toxic chemicals in the air and water.

These are part of massive cuts to HHS — all trumpeted as a campaign to “Make America Healthy Again.”

One thousand two-hundred employees are being fired from the NIH, 2,400 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and 3,500 from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Research on “woke” topics will be most affected, but according to research centers like the University of Minnesota and the Mayo Clinic, the cuts in spending will also affect research into anti-viral drugs for Covid, Parkinson’s disease, cancer, diabetes, and degenerative brain disease to name a few. The NIH will no longer cover overhead costs of research, which is done at universities, hospitals, research institutes and biopharmaceutical companies all over the country. Some of the halts in grants already awarded were overturned in court, but the Administration seems to have ignored these judicial orders.

The Administration said that the CDC will return to its “core mission” of infectious disease. But the CDC is called the Center for Disease Control and not the Center for Infectious Disease Control for a reason. This move would take the U.S. public health effort back to the 1940s, when communicable diseases, not noncommunicable diseases like heart disease, cancer, and diabetes were the leading killers.

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Ironically, The New York Times reported that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) recommendations led to the cancellation of $11.4 billion in grants to track infectious diseases, as well as support mental health programs and addiction treatment. And on April 2, Trump called for additional cuts to the agency of $29.1 billion, affecting research on asthma, lead poisoning, and violence prevention.

Adding salt to the wounds, the Administration is cutting $11 billion from state and local health departments who will have to take up the slack.

As Senator Patty Murphy said, “in the middle of a worsening nationwide outbreak of bird flu and measles, not to mention a fentanyl epidemic, Trump is wrecking vital health agencies with the precision of a bull in a China shop.”

In his past life, when he was deemed “too liberal” to head the EPA when considered for the post by the Obama administration, RFK Jr. railed against Big Pharma. However, the FDA, which regulates production of all human and veterinary drugs, medical devices, cosmetics, and our nation’s food supply is facing massive cuts under this Administration. There will be fewer inspections of food and drugs, leading to more illness and death from contaminated food.

It’s ironic that as Donald Trump’s massive tariffs go into effect around the world in an effort, he says, to bring jobs back to America, his Administration, under Musk’s direction has already eliminated over 100,000 U.S. jobs; now the U.S. stands to lose many thousand more positions in medicine, health, and biotechnology when the massive cuts in research go through. And the U.S. will lose revenue, too. According to a 2024 study by United for Medical Research, $2.46 is generated by every $1 of NIH funding.

One may argue that the HHS budget, is huge — even larger than Department of Defense. But the vast majority of this budget goes to Medicare and Medicaid, which is next to face the chopping block. The combined budgets of NIH, the CDC and the FDA represents less than 1% of the federal budget. The entire amount of the budget could be paid for easily if the 813 billionaires in the U.S. (74 more than last year) paid a fraction more than the 3% or less that most of them, and many major corporations, have paid in taxes. (Musk paid 0 in taxes in 2018, and his company, Tesla, paid 0 in taxes last year.)

A few final punches to the gut: HHS stands to lose 6 of its 32 regional offices, including those in New York, Boston and Chicago. The CDC, the NIH and the FDA, which have always handled their own communications, are now muzzled. RFK Jr. decided that all reports and memoranda must come through him alone. Finally, on April 2, Jay Bhattacharya, the new head of the NIH, in an unprecedented move, fired four of 27 institute directors, including the head of the National Institute of Child Health.

Dr. George Benjamin, the head of the American Public Health Association, summed up this tsunami of budget cuts and layoffs this way. “This is a nonsensical rearrangement of the agencies under their charge and an excuse to devastate the workforce for financial reasons. It will increase morbidity and mortality of our population and lead to a health crisis.”

Dr. David Gottsegen of Belchertown is a practicing physician at Holyoke Pediatric Associates and a new monthly columnist for the Gazette.