The agencies impacted include the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The FDA inspects and sets the safety standards for medication, tobacco, and food in the US. It is responsible, for example, for announcing the recall of contaminated food that may present a danger to the public, such as in the recent recalls of cookie dough and cucumbers. The agency is set to lose 3,500 employees.

Preventing diseases of all causes and tracking the spread of diseases already present is the job of the CDC. It also has programs to track mortality from violence, smoking, climate change, and other health risks. It is set to see around 2,400 jobs cut, with reports that at least nine high-level directors have been fired. Programs covering maternal and child health, HIV and AIDS, injury prevention, and improving work safety have also reportedly seen significant cuts.

The CDC is also monitoring the current bird flu and measles outbreaks in the US. Prior to the announcement of the job cuts, people had called into question Health Secretary Kennedy’s plan for tackling bird flu, while his claims about vitamin A reducing measles mortality have also sparked concern among doctors.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is cutting 300 jobs, while the NIH, which funds research into the cures for cancer, Alzheimer’s, HIV, and more, is losing 1,200 employees. WIRED reports that at least 10 principal investigators leading cutting-edge research have been fired. That included Dr Richard J. Youle, who won the Breakthrough Prize in 2021 for his contribution to understanding the role of cell death in Parkinson’s and other neurodegenerative diseases.

In our coverage of the Trump administration’s attack on science back in January, a student whose identity we kept anonymous for their safety said: “I just have one question for the parties responsible: what do you hope to gain for society by halting science?” Amid these latest cuts, the question remains pressing – and unanswered.

Trump has a history of animosity toward the NIH. In 2020, facing accusations that his administration had failed to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic – which had led to the deaths of over 400,000 people in the US by the time Trump left office – he attacked the NIH in what many saw as an attempt to shift the blame. A scandal also arose when a Trump health appointee, Michael Caputo, tried to restrict a scientific publication from the CDC during the COVID pandemic in 2020, as its findings went against the messaging from the White House.

The US healthcare system is also the most expensive among high-income countries, both per person and as a percentage of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Nearly 18 percent of the country’s GDP is spent on health care, and yet people in the United States typically die younger and are less healthy than residents of other high-income countries. The radical cuts to health agencies and departments have some concerned that these negative statistics will only worsen.

“The cuts today at CDC targeted programs that address all aspects of American lives,” a source at the CDC told WIRED. “This will lead to worse health outcomes, greater risks to the US public, and will contribute to the decline in US life expectancy … programs that were eliminated fund positions across the country, in red and blue districts.”