In the coming days, the US Senate is expected to confirm Jay Bhattacharya as the new director of the National Institute of Health. This decision is awaited not only by the staff of the organization and scientists of the United States. The key institution of American science has been subjected to purges and pressure from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is headed by entrepreneur and billionaire Elon Musk. Why the reforms initiated by Donald Trump’s people are reminiscent of the situation in Germany in the 1930s and how the DOGE plans threaten the development of advanced science – this was told to T-invariant on condition of anonymity by the head of one of the laboratories of the National Institute of Health.
– Why are you answering my questions anonymously?
– The thing is, there was a directive from the department’s leadership prohibiting any contact with the media until a special announcement was made.
– And before?
– Before, technically, you had to get permission, too. But because before contacts with the media did not include political statements, no one followed these authorizations. Now the situation has changed, and we have been made to understand that any statements expressing disagreement with the current policy will be fraught with consequences. And I don’t want to provoke such consequences. I would prefer to decide for myself whether I want to work for this government or not.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is an agency of the US Department of Health. It was founded in 1887. The world’s largest public medical research center, one of the main sources of funding for biomedical research. It consists of 27 institutes and research centers specializing in various fields (oncology, cardiology, neurology, etc.). Thanks to the NIH, cancer treatments, HIV/AIDS therapies, innovative gene technologies and other major medical advances have been developed. The NIH is funded by the U.S. government.
– When did you and your colleagues at your institute sense that change was coming?
– Very quickly. About a week after Trump’s inauguration, at the end of January, all employees of federal organizations and services from Musk’s new structure received an offer of voluntary dismissal with financial compensation.
– Does that include all employees at your Institute?
– Pretty much yes, all employees at all federal agencies, with the exception of temporary workers such as postdocs and interns. Those who are in these temporary positions, they are not federal civil servants. As we know, at the end of the day, over 77,000 people across the government took advantage of this offer.
– Were there people at NIH who quit under this offer?
– I have no doubt there were. But there weren’t in my lab.
– Now comes word that former NIH Director Francis Collins, one of the symbols of your organization, has resigned as head of the lab….
– And he’s not the only one, it must be said. He is the most famous of these people. But there are a number of others who have held high positions at NIH. For example, one person who has been acting director several times and for quite a few years. And some other leaders have retired as well.
– Does it have anything to do with the reform of the institute’s activities?
– None of them gave reasons. And formally they have every right to do so, they are already over 70, although not by many years. It is clear that in a different situation they would prefer to continue working. But no one needs to explain anything, the real reasons are clear to everyone.
– For several days the resources of NCBI (the US National Center for Biotechnology Information) were not available. Databases such as PubMed, GenBank and BLAST would not not open from a wide variety of countries, including Europe.
– I’ve heard of this before. And I’m surprised. I have everything available, but I’m logging in from a government computer. If they weren’t opening in other countries, that’s a very serious problem, hopefully, just a technical one.
– So there have been no reports on this?
– Not the slightest. I can only suspect that this technical issue has to do with some people being laid off. There are a number of employees who joined us less than a year or two ago. And they were fired first. Some of them have just managed to be reinstated because it turned out that without them, these databases would not work.
– And how is the interaction between the institute’s management and DOGE going on now? What does it look like?
– This is a very sensitive question. It is somewhat difficult to answer it even anonymously. Representatives of this very DOGE are stationed in various state institutions in fairly senior positions. And, in particular, in the health department, too.
– Have you personally met with them?
– No, only the management, and some of these fired people whose reinstatement was being considered. The meetings themselves are held online, no one goes anywhere. The conversations take the form of some sort of interviews. From what I could understand, the person who is sent specifically to our Department of Health and Human Services is generally pretty competent. He at least knows what the NIH does, and even NCBI, and what PubMed is.
– Do you know what specific claims are made by DOGE on the work of your institute?
– It is known, rather, not from DOGE, but from Kennedy, the new Secretary of Health. He thinks everything was done wrong with vaccines, and generally everything was done wrong during the pandemic. I suspect that DOGE shares that view. But that’s beside the point, because the charge is the same for everyone: Elon Musk is hungry and wants to gobble up as many employees of the federal government as possible.
– Is the official complaint that you are spending too much money? Or are you spending money on the wrong things? Those are different things.
– Not really although these are related things. The claim is made in general to everyone working for the government. No one in particular is getting into the details at this stage. For example, these same people, hired less than two years ago, are being fired in droves. Simply because they’re not protected, they can’t go to court about it.
There have been no inquiries as to whether they are doing a good job or a bad job, and whether they are working on important projects or on meaningless ones. Moreover, they were notified in a particularly cynical way that their productivity did not meet the needs of the department. Even though the work of many of them was rated the highest in the latest performance appraisal. Some cynical appearance of performance appraisal is made. Whether this work is important or needed, is not being considered at this time. It will be considered in the course of further downsizing, when whole departments will apparently be cut.
– Have there been any signals from Kennedy, Musk, or the Trump administration that this reform is freeing up a lot of talent in the marketplace that is supposed to be used…where?
– Absolutely not. People are fired, and then it’s up to them where to go.
– How is the leadership of your institute behaving now? What’s being broadcast to you?
– Well, the management is, of course, extremely cautious. They send all sorts of soothing messages about what a wonderful institution we have and how it will remain wonderful under any circumstances and so on. It sounds insubstantial.
– And how has the leadership responded to the more specific DOGE request to list five accomplishments in the last week, to describe what you’ve been doing?
– The reaction to that varied widely in different parts of the government. Some, like the Department of Justice, have adamantly refused to comply with it at all. Others, less powerful agencies, instructed their employees to implement it. Our department and a few others have taken an intermediate position. That is, they said that they were not in any way insisting that anyone respond to it, but if they wanted to, they could respond.
Alexei Khokhlov, a well-known physicist, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, draws a curious parallel between today’s situation with the NIH and the reform of the Russian Academy of Sciences:
“The events surrounding the 2013 RAS reform are still fresh in our memory. Therefore, when reading about the ongoing protests of scientists in the U.S. related to the planned mass layoffs in scientific institutions subordinate to the federal government, comparisons with the protests of Russian scientists in 2013 involuntarily come to mind. In terms of the picture, it’s roughly the same, only the clothes are different: it’s winter now, and it was summer then. From the point of view of external circumstances, it is felt that in the U.S. the scientific community is fragmented, there are no established institutions that can serve as centers for its self-organization.
From the point of view of the final result we will see, the situation is changing rapidly, but so far it seems that many scientists “with a name” are not in a hurry to express their position. In any case, on the website of the American National Academy of Sciences I found no trace of the rather dramatic events taking place.
Also indicative is the panic that arose in early March when access to the PubMed database, which is used by many life scientists, was suspended: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00674-3.
Because the base is funded by the U.S. government through the National Institute of Health, there was immediate suspicion that it had “fallen under the knife of cuts.” Although it later turned out that the failure was due to technical reasons, “the residue remained.
I cite this example to emphasize once again the vulnerability of the thesis of some of our officials that funding a scientific database from the state budget is more reliable than funding by a private company. This thesis does not stand the test of experience.
Finally, since the events surrounding the 2013 RAS reform were mentioned above, I will allow myself (for reference purposes) to repeat here a link to the relevant chapter of my memoirs (written during the quarantine on covid in 2020).” https://disk.yandex.ru/i/2G5Rr50qd1Uw6g
– Did you answer?
– No.
– Do you know any colleagues who responded?
– I know some who did, but how many in total at NIH responded, unfortunately, I don’t know. That would be interesting to know. Across the government, about 40% responded. There is a second such letter coming in now.
– Do you have to list your accomplishments for the week again?
– Yes. And what’s more, this letter says that it will now be weekly.
– Will you respond?
– Only by direct order.
– You worked in the Soviet Union. Does that remind you of anything in style?
– (laughs). How should I put it? All taken together, of course, it reminds of a lot of things. The purge itself, at least in my experience, is unprecedented. Strange as it may seem, there was no such thing in the Soviet Union when I was there. And the whole situation, of course, is reminiscent of Germany in the 1930s, which is no secret.
– But there have been similar things in US history? For example, during the McCarthyist era?
– Well, that’s certainly the analogy that comes to mind first. It wasn’t like that, though. That was blatant ideological persecution. It is not the case her. Nor, in general, is there any ideology.
– The main idea is the fight for efficiency, right?
– That’s what it’s called. But in fact, I would say that a sort of corporate mentality is being imposed in the spirit of not the best corporations – those that operate in rigid regimes.
– Do you have any internal corporate resistance to this?
– There is rather none, except for one aspect. The thing is that temporary workers, postdocs, are unionized. And their trade union is quite active, it tries to defend them against any infringement of their rights. And they go to court. Well, it’s kind of its mission to protect people and in this sense to counteract any measures against them, so It’s hard to fire these unionized workers. But the thing is, the people who are in this union are not the main target. Because they’re not people who hold permanent government positions.
– How secure do you feel?
– I feel poorly protected. It will be difficult to fire me directly because there is no mechanism for firing heads of laboratories who have a permanent position, but to do it during reorganization, during liquidation of subdivisions – here you can fire anyone. Another thing is that I personally am not terribly worried about this issue. I can retire at any minute and find an opportunity to do science at a private university. But the fate of my lab and my staff really bothers me a lot.
– If you were approached by a DOGE employee and asked: “Describe to us the main risks of the reform we are contemplating,” what would you say?
– First, I would explain to them that they are getting rid of federal employees without any reasonable plan. They are simply eliminating what is easier to eliminate, what is fraught with fewer problems with the courts, and that could lead to the complete destruction of this whole apparatus.
Secondly, I would explain the thing about the science proper. It’s a pretty serious issue because it’s not even about the program that I work in, the internal NIH program. It’s awfully unfortunate if it is destroyed, of course, but it involves employees who work directly for the government, which is relatively few. But the fact is that they are affecting grant programs in a very serious way as well, trying to save money that is absolutely insignificant on a national scale. And this is already radically destroying science. If their plans are implemented in full and not revised within a few months, U.S. scientific leadership will come to an end. It’s already in jeopardy. China is breathing down our necks.
– And are there any specific statements from DOGE about how much they want to cut, for example, the health department budget? Or reduce the number of employees?
– Yes, although these figures change all the time. They say they want to cut 15-20% of the staff. Although about half of these people have already left or been fired from NIH. As for the money, they give amounts, but those numbers change so quickly! And, in particular, the ones Musk cites are so inflated that it’s pointless to talk about it. Musk probably calculates the effect of his actions in some way, which translates into sums that are completely unrealistic. I have no reason to think he doesn’t know or can’t immediately find out how much the NIH budget is – it’s open, completely public and available in two clicks. But for his reasons, he’s just calling some huge numbers out of his head.
– And let’s come at this from the other side. Let’s imagine that, on the contrary, DOGE employees approach you with the question, “We need to optimize and make more efficient the work of your institute. What should we do?”
-First of all, I’m not talking to these people. I’m not giving them any advice. We already know that, no matter how decent it looks at first, it will end up disgusting. This organization has already completely discredited itself. But if I were asked about this by reasonable people in the government, if it was people like Al Gore, for example, who were in charge of making government more efficient in previous administrations, I would say two things. The first is to overhaul the administrative structure because there’s a lot of ballast in it. I will note that the only action of the new Trump administration that I don’t exactly agree with, but that I don’t abhor and resent, is the elimination of these offices of diversity equity and inclusion (DEI). The preoccupation with this issue has gone way too far in previous years. Whether they should be eliminated completely, is a difficult question, but they certainly should have been kept under control. There are other administrative structures that seem superfluous.
Next we can, if we are talking about NIH, deal with analyzing its actual scientific activity. There are inefficient laboratories in any scientific institution. We have them as well. My point is that a reduction on roughly the same scale that they are announcing could be done in some rational way. But today we don’t see even an attempt to act in that manner.
– What do you see as the most obvious consequences of their actions?
– Well, there could be different scenarios, or, to use Musk’s expression, which he used in his offer of voluntary dismissal, a fork in the road. The fork in the road is this, in my opinion: if they realize everything they want, then, in general, all science in our country (and not only in our country, it will affect science around the world), will be hit very hard. Scientists from different countries who work with us have already felt it.
But the fork in the road is that their plans may not materialize because there will be a pushback at the departmental level, at the level of the NIH. As they have already done with their requirement to report a week’s worth of work. So far, that hasn’t materialized. We’ll see if it continues to be implemented.
A team of young researchers in the United States initiated nationwide rallies on March 7 under the slogan “Stand up for Science”. They called on US citizens to demonstrate their appreciation of science and its benefits to society. Rallies were held in Washington, D.C., Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Seattle, Nashville, Austin and many other cities across the country.
– Let’s imagine they did exactly what they set out to do, and in exactly the way they are acting now. But four years from now, America elects a Democratic president. How quickly can the job be restored?
– I don’t think it’s going to be fast at all. It’s going to be very hard to recover from that. Especially in terms of competition on the international arena, which China is actually winning even without Musk and Trump, without any DOGE.
– Do you see any mechanisms in American society and in the American state that can stop this roller?
– I see only one mechanism that will not stop it immediately, but it can slow it down a lot. It is the 2026 congressional elections. If the Republicans lose both chambers, the situation will change drastically and the current government may get busy with other matters. I don’t see any other effective mechanisms.
– There is a formal justification for this reform that DOGE is pursuing — to increase the efficiency of state agencies, state government. What can be said about the hidden reasons for this?
– All of this is largely in the realm of psychology. People with the ideology and ethics of wild capitalism have come in. Profit is their ideal in general. There may be little or no concrete material gain for specific people from these actions. But they simply operate within such a paradigm. They hate anyone who works for the government. Well, even more so scientists, the highly educated part of the government workforce, people who mostly support the Democrats.
– And do you know how the leadership of your institute is interacting with the new Secretary of Health, Kennedy, Jr.?
– Oddly enough, in the entire time that Kennedy has been in office, we have not received a single message from him. Perhaps that will come when the new NIH director, Jay Bhattacharya, the nominee proposed by Trump, as I understand it, at Kennedy’s behest, is confirmed.
– What’s being said about him?
– I know very little about him. But it’s already clear that this is a man who has been involved in public health, health economics to a large extent. He even has, if I’m not mistaken, two PhDs: one in public health and one in economics as such. Well, and he’s a professor at Stanford. All in all, it requires some sort of intellectual level, so this appointment doesn’t seem as crazy as it did with Kennedy Jr. True, as we know, he also takes an anti-vaccine stance, but not on insane grounds, but on some economic grounds where they say you should vaccinate select groups.
– How does the situation at the institute feel psychologically?
– Of course, there is anxiety, worry. Some people in temporary positions have understandably and justifiably accelerated their job search. In general, it is difficult for me to assess the situation: after all, with some exceptions, I communicate within my laboratory. And maybe it is to my credit that the situation in my lab remains normal.