The Trump Administration Is Objectively Pro-Cancer

https://prospect.org/health/2025-04-23-trump-administration-objectively-pro-cancer/

Amid the chaos of Donald Trump’s misrule—what with his on-again, off-again trade war causing a sharp slide in the dollar, a rise in American borrowing costs, accelerating inflation, and possibly a severe recession—his attack on basic medical research is getting less attention. Elon Musk’s DOGE goons have slashed federal grants across the country, and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is putting through further sweeping layoffs and budget cuts. Meanwhile, Trump’s war on immigrants is targeting top medical researchers.

In particular, cancer research and treatment in America is being gored. Development of promising diagnostics and treatments has been called into question or frozen, clinical trials are being halted, and—unless the cuts are stopped—hospitals around the country will be bankrupted. Many Americans will die soon, and many more will die in future who could have been saved.

Let me start with immigration. America has the most advanced medical research system in the world, which has attracted brilliant researchers from many countries. The flip side of that fact, however, is that system depends to a great degree on highly skilled immigrants. In any previous administration, the legal status of such people would be all but sacrosanct—people might argue about deporting unauthorized construction workers, but not a handful of world-class scientists with legal visas or green cards.

Until now. For instance, the cancer scientist Kseniia Petrova, a Russian immigrant who worked at Harvard’s renowned Kirschner Lab, has been in a Louisiana ICE prison for two months now, and is facing deportation to Russia because she allegedly lied to a border control officer about carrying frog embryos for research purposes. Not only is this likely false—she told NBC News that she did tell the officers the truth—but the usual penalty for such a piddling violation is a $500 fine, knocked down to $50 for a first offense. Instead, ICE revoked her J-1 visa and threw her in prison pending a hearing to deport her back to Russia, where she might easily end up in prison or dead for criticizing the Putin regime.

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