In a stark rebuke of the Trump-Vance Administration’s proposed 2026 federal budget, more than 100 leaders from the biomedical and health sciences industries have issued a dire warning: the proposed cuts to scientific research and public health infrastructure could devastate the very systems that fuel American innovation, economic competitiveness, and global health leadership.
The open letter—signed by 110 CEOs and board chairs of U.S. biopharma and life sciences companies—argues that the Trump Administration’s aggressive rollback of federal research funding and anti-vaccine posturing jeopardizes not only U.S. scientific progress but also national security and global public health.
“Federal funding for scientific research is essential to the sustainability of the biomedical industry, maintaining the United States’ technological edge, and crucial for this country’s ability to protect and strengthen our economic and national security,” the authors write.
Six Ways the Cuts Threaten U.S. Science
The industry leaders warn that the Trump Administration’s proposed reductions—targeting the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation (NSF), and other key science agencies—will do irreversible harm in six critical areas:
- Workforce Collapse: Eliminating graduate training programs and postdoctoral research positions will gut the next generation of U.S. scientists.
- Innovation Paralysis: Loss of small business grants and technology development contracts will stifle the development of novel therapeutics and tools.
- Broken Research Pipeline: Canceling subcontracts to biotech firms for clinical trial support, assay development, and diagnostics will delay life-saving innovations.
- Disrupted Discovery: Setbacks in basic and translational research will dry up the foundational science that fuels product pipelines.
- Start-up Starvation: Slashed support for university spin-offs will choke off early-stage innovation at its source.
- Supply Chain Shocks: Reduced procurement of scientific supplies will ripple through the economy, hampering R&D and destabilizing biotech manufacturing.
The collective impact, they argue, will be a “catastrophic effect on the advancement of biomedical and biotechnology capabilities in the United States.”
Undermining Global Vaccine Confidence
Compounding the threat, President Trump’s Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. recently announced the U.S. will withhold a $1.6 billion pledge to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, a key global partner in immunization campaigns. Citing debunked concerns about vaccine safety, Kennedy accused Gavi of “ignoring the science”—a statement that echoes his long record of promoting vaccine misinformation.
This move follows the administration’s dismissal of all 17 expert members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), replacing them with political appointees tasked with revisiting the childhood immunization schedule. The decision has been widely condemned by pediatricians, scientists, and public health professionals as a dangerous politicization of routine vaccination policy.
Such politically motivated attacks on vaccines, especially when amplified by government leaders, threaten to erode hard-won public confidence in immunization and could derail global eradication efforts for diseases like measles, polio, and rubella.
A System at the Breaking Point
Together, these actions represent a coordinated assault on the pillars of U.S. public health and biomedical leadership. The Trump-Vance Administration’s proposed defunding of scientific research, abandonment of evidence-based vaccine policy, and rejection of global health cooperation signal a profound shift away from the principles that have defined American leadership in science and global health.
For an industry that thrives on long-term investment, international collaboration, and scientific rigor, the stakes are existential. The message from America’s biotech leaders is clear: the consequences of these policies will be immediate, measurable, and potentially irreversible.
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