“Putting America First” — Undermining health for populations at home and abroad

Finally, it’s important to acknowledge the ways in which retrenchment of global health research and support is in keeping with attacks on health research and higher education more generally. The retraction of NIH grants, for example, has jolted U.S. academic medical centers. Clinicians, researchers, and universities can seek redress from local and federal courts and from the legislative branch. We must resist the impulse to “keep our heads down” and act out of fear and for self-preservation. Rudolf Virchow noted that “it is the curse of humanity that it learns to tolerate even the most horrible situations by habituation, that it forgets the most shameful happenings in the daily shame of events.” Clinicians, scientists, and others must resist these ill-thought federal policies and stand firm in support of evidence-informed actions. The lives and well-being of people in the United States and throughout the world depend on it.

Christopher P. Duggan, M.D., M.P.H., et al.

Read full article by Christopher P. Duggan, M.D., M.P.H., et al. in The New England Journal of Medicine