WIKIMEDIAOn Monday afternoon, details of proposed cuts to the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) appeared briefly online before being taken down—but not before screenshots were taken. The apparently leaked (or at least mistakenly posted) document detailed proposed cuts to HHS, including slashing the National Cancer Institute budget by $1 billion compared to the agency’s total 2017 budget and an overall cut of more than $7 billion for the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
This version of the Trump administration’s budget proposal will likely get a reception from science advocates and legislators on both sides of the isle that is just as icy as the reaction to the administration’s previous plan, released in March. “There’s no way Congress will take this seriously. Especially the NIH cut,” wrote Jennifer Zeitzer, a spokesperson for the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB), in an email to The Scientist. “Democrats and Republicans blasted the NIH cut when the ‘skinny budget’ came out in March, and this is actually worse, so I can’t imagine they will have anything nice to say about it.”
The latest budget proposal also suggests cutting several programs at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), ...
