For decades, the United States has been the destination for scientific talent from around the globe. Now, with the Trump administration’s mass layoffs and cuts to scientific research at the National Institutes of Health, that could be about to change.
Earlier this month, a proposal leaked showing the Trump administration’s draft plan to slash the National Institutes of Health budget. The NIH is the largest biomedical research agency in the world. The administration’s proposal would cut more than 40% from its $47 billion budget and consolidate its 27 institutes and centers into just eight, eliminating four.
The plan has shaken up the agency and the broader scientific community, since so much medical research depends on NIH funding. It also appears to have the potential to cause young scientists to look abroad to continue their work.
“We may very well see, as a result of what’s happened in these dramatic few months, a reverse brain drain, where we start to lose some of our best and brightest young scientists because they think they will have a better chance in another part of the world,” said Dr. Francis Collins, who left the NIH in February. “That would be terribly tragic.”
Collins spent 32 years at the agency, including 12 as its director. During his time at the agency, he helped mentor many young scientists. He told 60 Minutes the upheaval has already impacted researchers who are just starting their careers, both because funding has been cut for necessary lab supplies and because many universities have stopped taking on new graduate students or postdoctoral fellows.
“This is a generation that we might lose of young talent,” Collins told 60 Minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi. “They’re the ones who are going to make those next breakthroughs for cancer and diabetes and rare diseases, and many of them aren’t sure there’s a path [in the U.S.] anymore.”
Collins said the U.S. has been the destination for medical research for decades, but other countries — including China — are now starting to catch up. China will take advantage of any loss in American momentum, Collins said.
China, along with Australia and Europe, has already boosted its recruitment efforts, hoping to capitalize on the potential “brain drain” from America. In France, a new program called “Safe Place for Science” within Aix Marseille University has dedicated millions of dollars to entice students from the U.S.
And scholars, it seems, are ready to be lured. Three-quarters of American researchers and graduate students who responded to a recent survey in the weekly scientific journal Nature said they’re considering leaving the U.S. to work.
But programs abroad aren’t immune to changes in the U.S. either. Last month, the Trump administration sent a survey to some international agencies and universities around the world that receive U.S. funding from various federal sources. The questionnaire asked researchers whether their projects complied with U.S. government interests, including ending DEI and climate initiatives.
Kristin Weinstein, a PhD candidate at the University of Washington, said she thinks the Trump administration’s actions are deliberate.
“Scientists are a group of people who are highly educated and who are good at forming community,” Weinstein told 60 Minutes. “And I think that by defunding scientific research and creating brain drain, that helps to consolidate control and power.”
To continue her research on cancer and auto-immunity after graduation, Weinstein and her family are considering moving abroad. So far, she has explored options in Europe and Canada.
Weinstein worries America’s loss in medical research could lead to other countries’ gain — including China.
“I think that even if you don’t have scientists that are specifically going towards China, wherever they’re going, they’re dispersing,” she said. “And so, you’re losing a pool of talented individuals in the United States, which is currently the global leader of biomedical research.”
According to former NIH director Francis Collins, if the U.S. loses its status as the leader in biomedical research, the consequences will be about more than health — they’ll also be about economics.
Collins pointed to the Human Genome Project, which he led for most of its 13 years. The project cost the U.S. taxpayers about $3 billion from 1990 to 2003. Collins said the current estimates are that its return on investment is well over $1 trillion.
“If we had another occasion like that right now, a project came along sort of like the Human Genome Project, some really big, bold, a little risky but if it works, would we in the United States in this situation have the courage to take it on?” Collins speculated. “Or would somebody else do that?”
Credit: Photos and video courtesy of NIH Clinical Center, Getty Images & AFP.
The video above was produced by Brit McCandless Farmer and edited by Scott Rosann.
