Impacts of the 2024 change in US government on ME/CFS and Long Covid

https://bsky.app/profile/thesicktimes.bsky.social/post/3ljdbs7mnys2b

 

One impact of the 2024* change in US government on ME/cfs and Long COVID is that resources on medicine and science are disappearing. Workarounds are being created and I started a thread for sharing resources here:
https://www.s4me.info/threads/preserving-access-to-disappearing-information-and-research.42666/



* The change was actually in 2025. The new administration took office on 20 January 2025, not 2024. Thanks!

 

My daughter and I, both with severe ME, may lose health care, all our income, and housing due to threats to disability benefits, retirement funds I paid into all my life, and medical programs that provide health care for millions of US citizens, senior and disabled included. I do not think that people expected this level of impact from the change in government.

 

Oh gosh, I did. (Ouup, I think this might be political. Sorry mods. Please delete if necessary.)

Hugs to you and your daughter. This is so hard and scary. And wrong!

 

I believe this is related but moderators please move or delete if it is not

As RFK Jr. delivers his message on measles, public health experts hear a familiar tune

 

Thank you. I remember when friends in the UK were going through upheavals with the NHS and ATOS and huge worries loomed. It's good to know our countries aren't completely isolated, and though systems change and threaten us, we have places like this forum, where there are friends who really "get it."

 

Often what happens in the US has a knock on effect eventually here in the UK.

You do have my deepest sympathies, we are trapped by external circumstances by our health.

 

NIH reels with fear, uncertainty about future of scientific research

https://wapo.st/4h8aiZx

 

Reuters: “US judge bars Trump administration from cutting NIH research funding”

“A U.S. judge Wednesday blocked President Donald Trump's administration from carrying out steep cuts to federal grant funding for research…”

“U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley in Boston issued a nationwide injunction, at the request of 22 Democratic state attorneys general and groups representing medical schools and universities who argued the National Institutes of Health's planned funding cuts were unlawful.”

 

Won’t this end up going to higher courts who side with him since he appointed them?

 

Washington Post: 'Read the resignation letter by former NIH official Nate Brought'

'Brought is the former director of the National Institutes of Health’s Executive Secretariat

'Donald Trump doesn't give a damn about federal employees or who works where'

 

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00703-1
Exclusive: NIH to terminate hundreds of active research grants

In an unprecedented move, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has begun mass terminations of research grants that fund active scientific projects because they no longer meet “agency priorities”.

Revealed: NIH research grants still frozen despite lawsuits challenging Trump order

NIH staff members have been instructed to identify and potentially cancel grants for projects studying transgender populations, gender identity, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the scientific workforce, environmental justice and any other research that might be perceived to discriminate on the basis of race or ethnicity, according to documents and an audio recording that Nature has obtained. Grants that allot funding to universities in China and those related to climate change are also under scrutiny.

At least 16 termination letters have already been sent out, says Brittany Charlton, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts, who has been tracking them. And hundreds more will be coming, say two NIH officials, who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the press.

“It’s extremely alarming that grants that have been vetted by the scientific community and deemed important and impactful to understand the world are now being cancelled because of political ideology,” says Lisa Fazio, a cognitive psychologist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, who studies misinformation. “For all this talk about free speech, this is direct censorship of scientific research.”

The actions come during the second month of US President Donald Trump’s presidency; on his first day in office, Trump issued executive orders “restoring free speech” to the American people and “defending women from ‘gender ideology extremism’” by banning federal funds that “promote or otherwise inculcate gender ideology”.

The NIH, which is the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world, did not respond to Nature’s queries about the grant terminations, their legality or how many the agency anticipated sending out.

Cut categories

Although many NIH research grants run for longer, scientists generally receive their funding one year at a time and are required to submit a progress report to the agency annually. NIH staff members then review this report and can issue a continuation of funding.

The agency, based in Bethesda, Maryland, has now asked its employees to review new and ongoing projects for any DEI activities and to place them in one of four categories: projects that solely support DEI-related activities (category one), projects that partially support these activities (category two), projects that do not support these activities but include some DEI-related language (category three) and projects that do not support any DEI activities (category four).

More at link: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00703-1

 

A new challenge for health advocacy in the US - language censorship

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/07/us/trump-federal-agencies-websites-words-dei.html

full article requires free registration - part image below

 

The removal of "women and underrepresented" isn't woke, it is a fact that women are underrepresented in research.

 

“confirmation bias” “accessibility” “disability” “discrimination” “female” “implicit bias” “institutional” “mental health” “pollution” “victim” “sense of belonging” “socioeconomic”

Banning these words (and the rest) is completely ridiculous. Orwellesque.

Banned from using the words “victim” and “pollution” and “female”. Like WHAT?

 

Research proposals concerning systemic inflammation were axed at the NIH, due to the word "systemic" (on the list) because it sounds a bit like the abhorent phrase "systemic racism."