A lab worker fired from the National Institutes of Health as part of the Trump administration’s widespread cuts says years of cancer research could be wasted. News4’s Aimee Cho reports.
A lab worker fired from the National Institutes of Health as part of the Trump administration's widespread cuts says years of cancer research could be wasted.
Emily, who asked that News4 only use her first name, worked in a cancer research lab at NIH for about a year before learning over the weekend she was terminated.
“Your ability, knowledge, and skills do not fit the agency’s current needs, and your performance has not been adequate to justify further employment," her termination notice read.
But Emily's performance review from last year shows a perfect score: 25 out of 25. Her boss also wrote, “Emily is doing an outstanding job … and is a vital member of the team.”
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She said she was about halfway through her probationary period, which is standard for new federal employees.
"Regardless of what happens, we're going to need cancer treatments, people working on this at every step along the way," she said. "I'm just worried people aren't going to get the treatments they need. People are going to lose their lives."
It’s not clear how many NIH employees were fired, but the News4 I-Team found thousands of people across the federal workforce have been terminated.
The Trump administration's cuts threaten to undermine decades of scientific research and have provoked outcry among researchers, doctors and university leaders, NBC News reports.
“The Trump administration is committed to slashing waste, fraud, and abuse while increasing transparency of where limited taxpayer dollars from NIH are going and how exactly they’re advancing scientific research and development,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai said in an emailed statement to NBC News.
However, Emily said she's worried for the future of the studies she worked on — many of which followed patients over years or even decades.
"This is going to waste years of data collection — at the worst, make these experiments invalid," she said.
"We're working on cures for cancer, working on cures for diabetes, working on cures for Alzheimer's, ALS, all of these things," said Dr. Matt Brown with Fellows United, a union that represents early career researchers at NIH.
"It's new, fresh ideas that propel science forward, right? Like, that's what it's all about, is finding that next thing, finding that next cure, finding that next treatment, finding that next theory of how things work. And without new people to do that, science slows down," Brown said.
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Emily said she plans to appeal to try get her job back. She's passionate about helping find cures for cancer because of her family's history.
"Several close family members of mine either have passed from cancer or survived cancer. And it's just something that affects so many people," she said.
"This is going to impact everyone down the line, not just us, and we don't want that," she said.
NIH is run by the Department of Health and Human Services. News4 has reached out to HHS for comment but has not yet heard back.
