In April 2025, less than three months after Donald Trump returned to the White House, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) put out its latest public health alert on so-called “superbugs”, strains of bacteria resistant to antibiotics.
These drug-resistant germs, the CDC warned, are responsible for more than 3m infections in the US each year, claiming the lives of up to 48,000 Americans.
Globally, the largely untreatable pathogens contribute annually to almost 5m deaths, and health experts fear that unless urgent steps are taken they could become a leading killer, surpassing even cancer, by 2050.
“We’re in a war against bacteria,” said Ian Morgan, a postdoctoral fellow at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), the world’s largest funder of biomedical research. He is on the frontlines of that war against superbugs; the NIH lab in which he works is driving what he described as “high-risk, high-reward research”.
But over the past year, the battlefield has toughened. Under the Trump administration, Morgan, 33, and thousands of other young American scientists like him have grappled with wave after wave of disruptions.
Billions of dollars have been wiped from research budgets, almost 8,000 grants have been cancelled at NIH and the US National Science Foundation alone, and more than 1,000 NIH employees have been fired.
Morgan’s research has been rattled by multibillion-dollar cuts in NIH contracts that make it impossible for labs to maintain their equipment. They have the choice of paying exorbitant maintenance fees, or giving up on experiments.
Amid the maelstrom, young and early-career scientists like Morgan are among the hardest hit. His own future is now in doubt.
In the normal trajectory of a life in science, Morgan would be planning to set up his own laboratory conducting groundbreaking research designed to win the war on superbugs. But with an ongoing hiring freeze at NIH, his options are limited.
“Right now there’s no way even to apply to start your own lab at NIH, no matter how good you are, or how critical your work,” he says.
... continue reading