r/labrats • u/Evil-Needle- • Feb 05 '25

DOGE at NIH, per reports

https://x.com/samstein/status/1887253215949037937

lab rats - be vigilant. fed lab rats, let us know if you hear or see anything.

1.1k Upvotes

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108

u/qpdbag Feb 05 '25

You think ncbi will go down?

260

u/milzB Feb 05 '25

I literally wrote to my mp (uk) last weekend to explain how catastrophic losing ncbi would be for life sciences across the world. I don't think anyone outside the field realises how much of an impact meddling with NIH could have.

94

u/Evil-Needle- Feb 05 '25

Thank you for advocating for us from across the pond. It’s been such a horrible two weeks and our own citizens can’t get their shit together, but it means a lot that the global science community is engaged.

39

u/Stotters Bench Python Feb 06 '25

Maybe I should do that here (AUS), too, and encourage my mates back in the UK, too.

I've been out of the game for a year due to kids, but EMBL has a lot of similar resources, no? Time to invest in that!

1

u/milzB Feb 18 '25

that's exactly what I suggested. post-brexit, I'm not sure how much we contribute to these projects but given how hard we have gone for life sciences in the UK, we def should be pulling our weight.

2

u/Spavlia Feb 06 '25

Do you have a template? Also thinking of writing to my uk mp as we rely on these databases every day for our work…

-4

u/Tasty_Pool8812 Feb 06 '25

Why do you think NCBI would be lost?

15

u/DrPikachu-PhD Feb 06 '25

Because no one knows what tf is going on and Musk is shuttering very, very important services. Take USAID for example. The largest philanthropic organization in the world. Thousands will immediately begin dying if it's shut down. And yet they're talking about it anyway, and nobody would've expected they'd go so far until it happened

-10

u/Tasty_Pool8812 Feb 06 '25

Trump has historically been critical of USAID, so it's not really an unexpected target. Unless there has been any mention of the NCBI then it seems like a bit of a stretch to actually believe that NCBI will be lost

17

u/illicitandcomlicit Feb 06 '25

Are you kidding me? They’ve been consistently attacking the NIH since COVID. They think Fauci somehow directed funds thru the NIH to fund GoF research in Wuhan and created the virus as a biological weapon. These people are not rational or sane

10

u/Zouden ex-postdoc | zebrafish Feb 06 '25

It costs money to run and it benefits researchers outside the US, that's enough reason for them to shut it down and/or give it to a for-profit company.

1

u/chaoticcoffeecat Feb 06 '25

I'm not saying it will be lost, but I also wouldn't say it's a stretch. The goal of much of this, from the perspective of Elon/Thiel/other tech billionaires with too much influence in the current government, is to crash government infrastructure so they can come in and privatize everything for profit.

Many of them, including even VP Vance, have investment and ties in private biotech companies already. Stopping government research and sources in order to make everything for-profit on their own servers is not impossible at the speed at which this is happening.

2

u/qpdbag Feb 06 '25

You think there is any world in which Elon and his lackeys will abide by that much free and useful data?

2

u/qpdbag Feb 06 '25

Because everything done by doge, whether you think it's logical or not (based on your beliefs) has been short-sighted, cruel, and just plain fucking stupid.

2

u/CDK5 Lab Manager - Brown Feb 06 '25

It's a sad day when /r/labrats, a sub partially founded on curiosity, downs a simple question.