Although Elon Musk is no longer the official head of his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), he and his team have extended their cuts, reportedly “hobbling” a federal government facility that does critical research into two diseases that are increasingly impacting Americans: Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
6.9 million Americans aged 65 or old are living with Alzheimer’s, the fifth-leading cause of death for Americans in that age group. Nearly one million Americans are living with Parkinson’s.
The New Republic‘s Greg Sargent reports that “one downsizing just started attracting notice among insiders at the National Institutes of Health, because it seems particularly inexplicable: According to people familiar with the situation, approximately one-tenth of the workers have now been let go at the NIH’s Center for Alzheimer’s and Related Dementias, or CARD, including its incoming director, a highly regarded scientist credited with important innovations in the field.”
Sargent reports that the “Trump-Musk cuts” have “resulted in the firing of numerous top researchers at CARD. His sources, he says, “predict big setbacks to fighting dementias.”
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“Republicans once lavished praise” on CARD, Sargent added. “Donald Trump and Elon Musk are hobbling it. What will those Republicans say now?”
“CARD’s full name—the Roy Blunt Center for Alzheimer’s and Related Dementias—honors former Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, an influential Republican who spoke glowingly about its potential to advance human progress when its opening was announced in 2022,” Sargent notes.
“The Trump-Musk rationales for deep cuts to spending on medical research are an insultingly ridiculous farce,” Sargent alleges. “The firings at the NIH’s Roy Blunt Center for Alzheimer’s and Related Dementias really lay this all bare.”
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Former Senator Blunt, who began his political work in 1973, and retired after five decades, has said almost nothing over the past year via social media. But he did manage to send a shout out last week to Gary Andres, the Republican Staff Director of the House Budget Committee, who he says has been nominated “to be Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services. I have worked closely with multiple HHS Secretaries and their staff and know the opportunity they have for meaningful impact on research that can save lives.”
HHS oversees the NIH.
Blunt says he knows Andres will “continue finding solutions without compromising positive outcomes.”
Some might think the former Senator, who is 75, married, and has four adult children, might take this opportunity to urge his former colleagues to push back on Musk’s cuts, at least to the NIH and the research facility that bears his name. If he has said anything, it has not been made public.