{"id":29754,"date":"2025-06-17T04:01:13","date_gmt":"2025-06-17T04:01:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=29754"},"modified":"2025-06-17T04:24:45","modified_gmt":"2025-06-17T04:24:45","slug":"south-africa-built-a-medical-research-powerhouse-trump-cuts-have-demolished-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=29754","title":{"rendered":"South Africa Built a Medical Research Powerhouse. Trump Cuts Have Demolished It."},"content":{"rendered":"
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In Cape Town, South Africa, one of the world\u2019s foremost H.I.V. researchers has been spending a chunk of each day gently telling longtime workers and young doctoral students that the money is gone and so are their jobs. When the calls are done, she weeps in her empty office.<\/p>\n

In the heart of Johannesburg, the lobby of a building that once housed hundreds of scientists is empty of people but choked with discarded office furniture and heaps of files hastily gathered from shuttered research sites.<\/p>\n

South Africa has for decades been a medical research powerhouse, yet its stature has been little known to people outside the field. South Africa\u2019s scientists have been responsible for key breakthroughs against major global killers, including heart disease, H.I.V. and respiratory viruses such as Covid-19. They have worked closely with American researchers and have been awarded more research funding from the United States than any other country has received.<\/p>\n

But a swift series of executive orders and budget cuts from the Trump administration have, in a matter of months, demolished this research ecosystem.<\/p>\n

There are grim ramifications for human health worldwide, and also for pharmaceutical companies, including American giants such as Pfizer, Merck, Abbott and Gilead Sciences, which rely heavily on South Africa\u2019s research complex when they develop and test new drugs, vaccines and treatments.<\/p>\n

\u201cSouth Africa is the beacon,\u201d said Dr. Harold Varmus, a professor of medicine at Cornell University who was awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine for his work on cancer biology and who was a director of the National Institutes of Health.<\/p>\n

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In Cape Town, South Africa, one of the world\u2019s foremost H.I.V. researchers has been spending a chunk of each day gently telling longtime workers and young doctoral students that the money is gone and so are their jobs. When the calls are done, she weeps in her empty office.In the heart of Johannesburg, the lobby of a building that once housed hundreds of scientists is empty of people but choked with discarded office furniture and heaps of files hastily gathered from shuttered research sites.South Africa has for decades been a medical research powerhouse, yet its stature has been little known to people outside the field. South Africa\u2019s scientists have been responsible for key breakthroughs against major global killers, including heart disease, H.I.V. and respiratory viruses such as Covid-19. They have worked closely with American researchers and have been awarded more research funding from the United States than any other country has received.But a swift series of executive orders and budget cuts from the Trump administration have, in a matter of months, demolished this research ecosystem.There are grim ramifications for human health worldwide, and also for pharmaceutical companies, including American giants such as Pfizer, Merck, Abbott and Gilead Sciences, which rely heavily on South Africa\u2019s research complex when they develop and test new drugs, vaccines and treatments.\u201cSouth Africa is the beacon,\u201d said Dr. Harold Varmus, a professor of medicine at Cornell University who was awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine for his work on cancer biology and who was a director of the National Institutes of Health.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29756,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29754"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29757,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29754\/revisions\/29757"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}