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      Trump administration has set Noaa on ‘non-science trajectory’, workers warn

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      The Trump administration has shunted one of the US federal government’s top scientific agencies onto a “non-science trajectory”, workers warn, that threatens to derail decades of research and leave the US with “air that’s not breathable and water that’s not drinkable”.Workers and scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) are warning of the drastic impacts of cuts at the agency on science, research, and efforts to protect natural resources.“The problems are still there. We still have harmful algal blooms, we still have fisheries that are collapsing, waters you can’t swim in. These problems don’t go away because we fired all the people who were trying to solve a problem,” said one Noaa veteran, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. “How do you save the arms and legs or the feet and hands when the core is dying?”The longtime research scientist with more than 20 years at Noaa has taken early retirement. “I left because it was just so demoralizing and fearful and scary,” they said.Trump administration officials are seeking to abolish the scientific research division at Noaa, the Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (Oar) office. It is the latest of a series of cuts at the agency that began the second Trump administration with 12,000 employees around the world, including more than 6,700 engineers and scientists.The cuts are disrupting the collection of data sets, including recordings of global temperatures in the air and ocean, and that data cannot be replaced, said the Noaa veteran.The dismantling of Noaa, they said, would harm work in many areas, from finding solutions to combat harmful algae and improving sustainable fisheries to work on new medicines and industrial products and collecting information for disaster preparation.“We can look at other countries that are actively making these mistakes, where they have air that’s not breathable and water that’s not drinkable,” they said. “I think it’s done. I think this is done. The enemies are in the gate. I don’t see any indication so far of anyone stopping it. They’re just letting it burn. I honestly don’t understand how US science will recover.”More than 800 probationary employees at the agency were fired, reinstated, then refired this month. Employees have reported having their firings backdated and having their health insurance canceled even though premiums were being taken out of their paychecks.Rachel Brittin, worked as the federal deputy director of external affairs at Noaa before she was fired, then reinstated, then fired again as a probationary employee, with just a few months left on her two-year probation.“The whole situation is a mess,” she said. “How is Noaa going to be able to keep up with the services it provides? I don’t know. I don’t know how that’s going to happen, but it’s very scary to me. The loss of anybody at Noaa is directly connected to services lost by every individual in the United States.”Contractors for the agency have been furloughed as all Noaa contracts over $100,000 have to now be approved by Trump’s Department of Commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick.Doge has slated 31 offices and building leases at Noaa for termination around the US. Nearly $4m in funding to Princeton University as part of a cooperative agreement with Noaa was cancelled on 8 April.Fourteen Noaa data services on earthquakes, marine, coastal and estuary science at have been slated for decommissioning, more than twice as many as in 2024.Four regional climate centers providing weather analysis tools and data for 21 states in the US have gone dark after lapses in funding, with the remaining two covering the US set to face a funding lapse in June.A reduction in force plan to cut an additional 10% of the agency’s workforce is anticipated and at least several hundred workers have taken voluntary buyouts or early retirement according to Noaa workers interviewed by the Guardian, though Noaa and the Department of Commerce did not disclose the numbers.“It seems clear that the actions that have been taken have intentionally reduced our ability to do our jobs,” said a Noaa scientist who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. “You’re not expected to get anything done.”They said due to firings, early retirements and resignations, scientific research teams around the agency have been left with gaps of expertise that can’t be replaced.“We are scrambling,” they added. “We are finding workarounds, but its becoming increasingly difficult.”Marty Kardos, a research molecular geneticist at the northwest fisheries science center at Noaa, decided to resign after the agency’s violations of their collective bargaining agreement with workers meant he would be forced to move from Montana to Seattle in a week or resign.“The agency is on a non-science trajectory,” Kardos said, speaking in a personal capacity. “All the plans for research we were making for the upcoming years are out of the window. Morale is extremely bad.”The attrition of scientists and management at Noaa is effectively undermining the agency’s ability to sustainably manage fisheries and identify and recover endangered species, he said.“The agency is essentially, openly hostile to their mission and their people,” Kardos added. “A lot of this seems to be related to deregulation. The agency is responsible for the Endangered Species Act for marine species and one way to hamstring the act without repealing it is to get rid of the scientists who help to implement it.”The cuts come as the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) and the Trump administration have installed allies in key positions at the agency.Neil Jacobs, the Trump nominee for Noaa administrator and acting head of Noaa in the first Trump administration, has yet to be confirmed. Jacobs was caught up in “Sharpiegate” – a bizarre 2019 incident when the White House was accused of altering a Noaa map of the predicted path of Hurricane Dorian with a black marker to support an incorrect claim by Trump that the Florida-bound storm would also hit Alabama.A staffer from Doge, Bryton Shang, announced this month he was appointed as a senior adviser to the Noaa administrator. Shang was one of the two Doge staffers who flew to Los Angeles during the wildfires in January, and attempted to open a large water pump system in California.Erik Noble, dubbed Trump’s “eyes and ears” at Noaa during his first administration, is back at the agency as deputy assistant secretary for oceans and atmosphere and is reviewing contracts at the agency with Keegan McLaughlin, a special assistant at the commerce department and former intern for the 2024 Trump campaign.Noaa was a target of Project 2025, the conservative roadmap for a second Trump administration. That document pushed to “break up NOAA” and labeled the agency “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry”.“Understanding things lets us make decisions that can put us on a track to things getting better. Knowing bad news doesn’t create the bad news. It lets you be prepared to take actions that may let you avoid the worst consequences,” the Noaa scientist at Oar added on the Trump appointees and the authority they are being given over scientific decisions.“Pretending that our resources are inexhaustible doesn’t make them inexhaustible,” they added. “I don’t think people understand the arrogance of thinking: ‘Hey, I think I understand this, even though I know nothing about it.’ This whole antithesis to experts, I don’t understand it. Would you want to do that with your own personal health? Why would you do it with any kind of complex system?”Noaa and the Department of Commerce did not respond to multiple requests for comment. More

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      RFK Jr calls sugar ‘poison’ but says government probably can’t eliminate it

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      The US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr on Tuesday called sugar “poison” and recommended that Americans eat “zero” added sugar in their food, while acknowledging that the federal government was unlikely to be able to eliminate it from products.Kennedy, however, said that better labeling was needed for foods and that new government guidelines on nutrition would recommend people avoid sugar completely.The health and human services secretary also announced plans to eliminate the last eight government-approved synthetic food dyes from the US food supply within two years.Kennedy said at a press conference on Tuesday: “Sugar is poison and Americans need to know that it is poisoning us.”He added moments later: “I don’t think that we’re going to be able to eliminate sugar, but I think what we need to do, probably, is give Americans knowledge about how much sugar is in their products, and also, with the new nutrition guidelines, we’ll give them a very clear idea about how much sugar they should be using, which is zero.”The secretary said the public is under-informed about food.“Americans don’t know what they’re eating. We’re going to start informing Americans about what they’re eating,” he said.Meanwhile, he did not talk about vaccines or vaccinations at the press conference, but it was reported by Politico, citing sources familiar with departmental discussions, that Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic, was considering removing the Covid-19 shot from the official federal list of recommended inoculations for children.The outlet quoted an HHS spokesperson as saying a final decision on whether to continue recommending coronavirus vaccines for children had not been made.In the food discussions at the press conference, Kennedy talked about various dyes. Health advocates have called for the removal of artificial and petroleum-based dyes from foods, with some studies suggesting a link to neurobehavioral problems, including hyperactivity and attention issues, in some children, although a conclusive link is still contested.The Biden administration previously moved to ban Red No 3 food dye, citing cancer risks in animal studies. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has consistently maintained that the approved dyes are safe.Following Biden’s directive, Red No 3 must be removed from foods by 2027 and from medications by 2028. Kennedy aims to remove the remaining petroleum-based dyes, health officials said.“American children have increasingly been living in a toxic soup of synthetic chemicals,” the FDA commissioner, Marty Makary, said. “These steps that we are taking means that the FDA is effectively removing all petroleum based food dyes from the US food supply.”The move could mark a major step in Kennedy’s broader campaign against potentially harmful food additives. But some are still questioning how successful this campaign will be, especially regarding the Trump administration’s anti-regulatory stance towards industry giants.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhen asked whether a formal agreement with food industry heads had been made, Kennedy responded: “I would say we don’t have an agreement. We have an understanding.”An enforcement strategy or a clear timeline for the upcoming ban remains unclear, though Makary said that the administration aims to eliminate the dyes “by the end of next year”.Kennedy questioned during the conference how the US would maintain world leadership “with such a sick population”, going on to refer to “all these autoimmune diseases” and “these exotic diseases”. He also expressed concern that the majority of American children cannot qualify for military service with certain conditions.He went on to speak about the apparent rise in several types of diseases and disorders, which he believes could be possibly linked to the use of food dyes or other additives. “I never knew anybody with a peanut allergy,” he said, referring to when he was a child. “I never knew anybody with a food allergy. Why do five of my seven kids have allergies?”The FDA has approved 36 food dyes for use in the US, nine of which are artificial and made from petroleum. The others are derived from natural sources, such as vegetables. More

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      in US Politics

      FDA suspends milk quality-control testing program after Trump layoffs

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      The Food and Drug Administration is suspending a quality-control program for testing fluid milk and other dairy products due to reduced capacity in its food safety and nutrition division, according to an internal email seen by Reuters.The suspension is another disruption to the nation’s food-safety programs after the termination and departure of 20,000 employees of the Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the FDA, as part of Donald Trump’s effort to shrink the federal workforce.The FDA this month also suspended existing and developing programs that ensured accurate testing for bird flu in milk and cheese and pathogens like the parasite Cyclospora in other food products.Effective Monday, the agency suspended its proficiency testing program for grade “A” raw milk and finished products, according to the email sent in the morning from the FDA’s division of dairy safety and addressed to “Network Laboratories”.Grade “A” milk, or fluid milk, meets the highest sanitary standards.The testing program was suspended because FDA’s Moffett Center Proficiency Testing Laboratory, part of its division overseeing food safety, “is no longer able to provide laboratory support for proficiency testing and data analysis”, the email said.An HHS spokesperson said the laboratory had already been set to be decommissioned before the staff cuts and that though proficiency testing would be paused during the transition to a new laboratory, dairy product testing would continue.The Trump administration has proposed cutting $40bn from the agency.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe FDA’s proficiency testing programs ensure consistency and accuracy across the nation’s network of food safety laboratories. Laboratories also rely on those quality-control tests to meet standards for accreditation.“The FDA is actively evaluating alternative approaches for the upcoming fiscal year and will keep all participating laboratories informed as new information becomes available,” the email said. More

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      in US Politics

      The Trump administration is sabotaging your scientific data | Jonathan Gilmour

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      United States science has propelled the country into its current position as a powerhouse of biomedical advancements, technological innovation and scientific research. The data US government agencies produce is a crown jewel – it helps us track how the climate is changing, visualize air pollution in our communities, identify challenges to our health and provide a panoply of other essential uses. Climate change, pandemics and novel risks are coming for all of us – whether we bury our heads in the sand or not – and government data is critical to our understanding of the risks these challenges bring and how to address them.Much of this data remains out of sight to those who don’t use it, even though they benefit us all. Over the past few months, the Trump administration has brazenly attacked our scientific establishment through agency firings, censorship and funding cuts, and it has explicitly targeted data the American taxpayers have paid for. They’re stealing from us and putting our health and wellbeing in danger – so now we must advocate for these federal resources.That’s why we at the Public Environmental Data Partners are working to preserve critical environmental data. We are a coalition of non-profits, academic institutions, researchers and volunteers who work with federal data to support policy, research, advocacy and litigation work. We are one node in an expansive web of organizations fighting for the data American taxpayers have funded and that benefits us all. The first phase of our work has been to identify environmental justice tools and datasets at risk through conversations with environmental justice groups, current and former employees in local, state, and federal climate and environment offices, and researchers. To date, we have saved over a hundred priority datasets and have reproduced six tools.We’re not fighting for data for data’s sake; we’re fighting for data because it helps us make sense of the world.The utility of many of these datasets and tools comes from the fact that they are routinely updated. While our efforts ensure that we have snapshots of these critical data sources and tools, it will be a huge loss if these cease to be updated entirely. That’s why we are “life rafting” tools outside of government – standing up copies of them on publicly accessible, non-government pages – hoping that we can return them to a future administration that cares about human and environmental health and does not view science as a threat.The second phase is to develop these tools, advocate for better data infrastructure, and increase public engagement. There’s a question of scope – if the government stops sharing National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration data, we don’t have the resources to start monitoring and tracking hurricanes. For many of these critical data sources, the government is the only entity with the resources to collect and publish this data – think about the thousands of weather stations set up around the world or the global air pollution monitors or the spray of satellites orbiting the earth. On the other hand, we do have the expertise to build environmental justice tools that better serve the communities that have borne the brunt of environmental injustice, by co-creating with those communities and by building from what we have saved from the government – like the Council on Environmental Quality’s CEJST, the Environmental Protection Agency’s EJScreen, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Social Vulnerability and Environmental Justice tools.A common refrain of the saboteurs is that if these functions that they are targeting are important enough, the states or the private sector will step in to fill the gap. While some of these functions of the federal government are replicable outside of government, privatization will render them less accessible, more expensive and subject to the whims of the markets. The states can also step in and fill some gaps – but many of the biggest challenges that we’re facing are best tackled by a strong federal government. Furthermore, many states are happily joining this anti-science crusade. The climate crisis and pandemics don’t stop politely at state borders. If data collection is left up to the states, the next pandemic will not leave a state untouched because it dismantled its public health department – but such actions will leave a gaping hole in our understanding of the risks to the residents of that state and its neighbors. What’s more, some states do not have the resources to stand up the infrastructure required to shoulder the burden of data collection. Coordination between federal and state governments is essential.Data is being stolen from us; our ability to understand the world is being stolen from us. Americans will die because the Trump administration is abdicating its responsibility to the people – this censorship regime will have dire consequences. That’s why we must stand up for science, we must be loud about the importance of federal data and we must put the brakes on Trump’s un-American agenda.

      Jonathan Gilmour is a data scientist at Harvard’s TH Chan School of Public Health, a fellow at the Aspen Policy Academy, and coordinator at the Public Environmental Data Partners. More

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      in US Politics

      Outrage as Trump’s coal expansion coupled with health cuts: ‘There won’t be anyone to work in the mines’

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      The Trump administration’s efforts to expand coal mining while simultaneously imposing deep cuts to agencies tasked with ensuring miner health and safety has left some advocates “dumbfounded”.Agencies that protect coal miners from serious occupational hazards, including the condition best known as “black lung”, have been among those affected by major government cuts imposed by the White House and the unofficial “department of government efficiency” (Doge) run by the billionaire Elon Musk.“The [Mine Workers of America] is thrilled they’re looking at the future of coal,” said Erin Bates, a spokesperson for the United Mine Workers of America, about a series of executive orders signed by the president to expand coal mining. “But – if you’re not going to protect the health and safety of the miners, there’s not going to be anyone to work in the mines you are apparently reopening.”Last week, Trump signed a raft of measures he said would expand coal mining in the US in order to feed the energy demands of hungry datacenters that power artificial intelligence software.“All those plants that have been closed are going to be opened if they’re modern enough, or they’ll be ripped down and brand new ones will be built,” Trump told a crowd of lawmakers, workers and executives at the White House while signing the order. “We’re going to put the miners back to work.”The coal industry has shrunk precipitously in recent years, and now represents only about 15% of the power generated for the US electrical grid. Natural gas, wind and solar have proved to have a competitive advantage over coal, contributing to its decline, because plants are cheaper to operate, according to Inside Climate News.Even as coal mining has shrunk, the potential dangers for people who still work in the field remains high. Pneumoconiosis is among the best known occupational hazards faced by coal miners, but is far from the only risk they face – others include roof collapse, hearing loss and lung cancer, to name a few.Trump’s push for coal came less than a week after the health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, imposed a 10,000-person cut to the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Cuts overseen by Kennedy, alongside those imposed by Musk’s unofficial Doge, represented the elimination of almost a quarter of HHS’s 82,000-person workforce.Nearly 900 of those workers were dismissed from the National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety (NIOSH), including in the agency’s respiratory health division in West Virginia, which specifically oversaw an X-ray screening program for black lung. Doge has also pursued cuts to mine safety by eliminating 34 regional offices of the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) in 19 states.The deep cuts especially worried those intimately familiar with the suffering caused by pneumoconiosis – such as Greg Wagner, a doctor and former senior adviser at the NIOSH.“My thoughts were, ‘Why NIOSH? Why now?’” said Wagner, whose early work at a community clinic in a small West Virginia coal mining town led him to a career working to prevent the disease at both NIOSH and as assistant secretary of labor for mine safety and health.Wagner also worked with the International Labor Organization and multiple countries in an effort to eliminate pneumoconiosis globally. He is now a professor of environmental health at Harvard’s TH Chan School of Public Health.The cuts “gutted” NIOSH, said Wagner, even as agency experts were “doing what they were asked to do and doing it extraordinarily well … Over-performing with little recognition. And to see that appear to be going up in smoke – I just – obviously my feelings were profound and complex.”The administration also wants to pause a new rule on silica dust – a kind of pneumoconiosis or “black lung” disease that is increasingly striking younger miners in Appalachia, as workers dig for harder-to-reach veins of coal.“To go into the silica rule – we’re almost dumbfounded,” Bates said. “The number of black lung cases that are showing up in the US is astronomical – it is increasing and not only are the numbers increasing, but it’s happening to younger and younger miners. Every single day this rule is delayed is another day our miners are contracting black lung.”Silicosis is a disease caused by inhaling silica dust, a form of pneumoconiosis that can be even more severe than the black lung of a century ago, and which has long been known to harm the health of coal miners.The government has been aware of the dangers of silica dust for decades, recommending dramatic reductions in exposure levels as early as 1974. In 1993, Wagner’s boss at NIOSH, Dr J Donald Millar, described the persistence of silicosis as “an occupational obscenity because there is no scientific excuse for its persistence”.The MSHA finalized a rule in April 2024 reducing silica dust exposure in mines, which was set to go into effect this year. Last week, the National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association filed a suit seeking to pause enforcement of the silica dust rule pending a lawsuit. Days later, federal mine regulators told the court they wanted to pause enforcement of the silica dust rule for coal mining operations by four months, delaying any enforcement actions until August 2025.“The sudden shift in litigation position signaled by MSHA’s ‘enforcement pause’, and by its unilateral proposal to hold this case in abeyance for a period of four months is a clarion call to this nation’s miners that the agency charged with the profound responsibility of protecting their health and safety is losing the stomach for the fight to vindicate its own rule,” attorneys for mine and steel unions wrote, seeking to intervene in the case.Wagner said his concerns about delay of the silica rule extended beyond miners into workers in other industries – including people who work sand blasting or carving engineered stone countertops, all known to be environments where workers can be exposed to potentially harmful levels of silica dust.“I don’t have the right words,” said Wagner about the cuts to NIOSH, which was deeply involved in research that showed how silica dust harmed miners. “I feel like it was just done without thought, done without consideration and the consequences of the loss of the agency i think will be felt for years.“We will need to try to rebuild what NIOSH has been doing.” More

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      in US Politics

      Trump is ‘fully fit’ and manages high cholesterol, says White House physician

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      Donald Trump – the oldest person to ever be elected US president – controls high cholesterol with medication and has elevated blood pressure but is “fully fit”, White House physician Sean Barbella said in a report released on Sunday.The US navy captain’s report was published two days after Trump underwent a routine physical. It also said he was up to date on all recommended vaccines – despite his national health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr having spent years sowing doubt about the safety and efficacy of vaccination.Trump himself has previously spread debunked claims about links between vaccines and autism often invoked by Kennedy.Barbella’s report is the most detailed information on the health of Trump, 78, since he returned to the White House in January for a second presidency.“President Trump exhibits excellent cognitive and physical health and is fully fit to execute the duties of the Commander-in-Chief and Head of State,” Barbella wrote in his report.The report noted that Trump’s high cholesterol is “well-controlled” with two medications addressing it.The medicines are rosuvastatin and ezetimibe, generic names of the branded drugs Crestor and Zetia. They have improved Trump’s cholesterol over time.Ideally, total cholesterol should be less than 200. At his physical in January 2018, his total cholesterol was 223. In early 2019, the reading came in at 196 and it stood at 167 in 2020. In Sunday’s report, it was listed as 140.Trump’s blood pressure was 128 over 74. That is considered elevated. And people with elevated blood pressure are likely to develop high blood pressure – or hypertension – unless they take steps to control the condition.The report also noted that Trump has scarring on his right ear, the result of a gunshot wound he suffered when a would-be assassin fired at him during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania last year.A secret service sniper killed the attacker, who fatally shot one spectator while wounding two others.Barbella’s report also references Trump’s history with Covid-19. Trump was hospitalized during a serious bout with the virus in October 2020 during a run for re-election that ended in defeat to Joe Biden.Amid questions about his age and mental acuity, Biden then dropped out of an electoral rematch with Trump in November 2024 and endorsed his vice-president, Kamala Harris, to succeed him. Trump won the popular and electoral votes against Harris to return to the presidency.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAfter the exam preceding the report, Trump told journalists on Air Force One: “It went, I think, well … Every test you can imagine, I was there for a long time, the yearly physical.“I think I did well.”Trump also told reporters he took a cognitive test. Barbella’s report gave Trump a 30 out of 30 on what is known as the Montreal Cognitive Assessment.The screening takes about 10 minutes to administer, according to information online. One version available online asks those undergoing the screening to draw a clock, repeat words, name animals and count backwards from 100 at intervals of seven, among other tasks.Trump’s resting heart rate was 62 beats per minute, in line with previous tests. A normal resting heart rate for adults ranges from 60 beats to 100 beats per minute. And generally, a lower rate implies better cardiovascular fitness.Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      in US Politics

      ‘We are failing’: doctors and students in the US look to Mexico for basic abortion training

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      On paper, it should not be difficult for Dr Sebastian Ramos to learn to perform abortions. As a family medicine doctor, Ramos works in a specialty that frequently provides the procedure. He lives in deep-blue California, where it is still allowed. And the administrators running Ramos’s residency program – a kind of apprenticeship that US doctors must undergo to become full-fledged physicians – support Ramos’s desire to learn how to do it.But over the course of his three-year-long residency, Ramos is guaranteed just three days’ worth of training at Planned Parenthood. Residents get to participate in only a handful of abortions.“That’s just not enough if you want to practice abortion care,” said Ramos, who asked to go by a shortened version of his last name to protect his privacy. “I knew that if I wanted to do this, I needed more experience.”That’s why, earlier this month, Ramos traveled to a clinic in Mexico City for two weeks’ worth of training in abortion provision. During his first week at the clinic, which is run by the global organization MSI Reproductive Choices and its Mexican arm Fundación MSI, Ramos performed roughly 60 abortions.In the years since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, paving the way for more than a dozen states to ban virtually all abortions, a small but growing number of would-be abortion providers have begun to leave the country in search of an education. In 2023, MSI trained nine American doctors to perform abortions at clinics in Mexico. In 2024, it trained 27. So far this year, it is on track to double that number.View image in fullscreen“On one hand, it’s a tremendous relief to know that medical students and residents aren’t going to have to forego this very important part of their training in their education,” said Pamela Merritt, executive director of Medical Students for Choice. Last year, Merritt’s organization helped eight medical students and residents receive abortion training in Mexico and the UK.Merritt continued: “It’s also incredibly sad that in the United States, we are failing to train people even to the standard of care indicated by abortion bans.”Every abortion ban in the US permits abortions to save a patient’s life. But without adequate training, doctors may not be skilled enough to perform abortions even in those dire circumstances.‘It’s a shame’Medical schools and residency programs are run by massive hospitals that are heavily dependent on public funding; such institutions tend to be, by nature, leery of anything as controversial as abortion. The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) has required OB-GYN residencies to teach doctors how to perform abortions since the 1990s, but rather than offer training in-house, hospitals have often farmed their residents out to freestanding abortion clinics for training.Even before Roe fell, this system was faulty: a 2019 study found that, despite the ACGME requirement, just 64% of OB-GYN residency programs offered “routine training with dedicated time” for abortions. Family medicine residents who want to learn to perform abortions face a greater disadvantage, since the ACGME does not require their residency programs to offer any kind of abortion training.View image in fullscreenEven most OB-GYN residents, program directors reported in the 2019 study, did not achieve what doctors call “competency” when it came to abortion. Without competency – a qualification that’s measured through a melange of doctors’ knowledge, skills and attitudes – doctors may not be able to safely perform abortions on their own.Abortion training and competency is now even harder to come by. Since Roe’s collapse, more than 100 abortion clinics have closed. Those that are left are often besieged by patients fleeing abortion bans, leaving them without the time and space to teach everybody who wants to learn.If an OB-GYN residency program is located in a state that bans abortion, ACGME rules currently dictate that the residency “must provide access to this clinical experience in a different jurisdiction where it is lawful”. The ACGME declined to respond to a request for information about how many residency programs are currently compliant with its abortion-training requirement, although records show that no OB-GYN programs have lost their accreditation status in the last year. Patricia Lohr serves as the director of research and innovation for the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (Bpas), a UK non-profit that provides abortions up until about 24 weeks of pregnancy. Lohr trained to become an OB-GYN in the US. “Having been a resident and a medical student in the United States, I could really see the importance of having access to abortion education that wasn’t entirely reliant on what was being delivered within academic training programs,” Lohr said. “Because often, abortions weren’t being provided in those academic hospitals.”View image in fullscreenWhen Lohr moved to the UK, she quickly moved to create a two-week training program at Bpas where medical students could learn about abortions and observe – but not perform – the procedure. In the years since Roe fell, that training program has received a surge of applications from American medical students and residents.“It’s a shame that people would have to travel to learn a basic part of women’s health care,” Lohr said. “There are many trainees out there at the moment who would like to obtain abortion skills, but cannot get it locally, and so they get diverted into doing something else.”Lauren Wiener, a New Jersey medical student, had originally planned to travel to Arizona in summer 2022 to learn how to provide abortions. But when Roe’s fall led Arizona abortion providers to temporarily stop working, Wiener had to cancel her trip. Instead, she ended up undergoing a week-long training at Bpas last fall.“It is something that you need to know how to do, because there are emergency situations,” Wiener said of abortions. “You might not want to electively perform an abortion at 24 weeks, but if someone comes in and they’re miscarrying, you need to know how to evacuate that uterus. It’s a skill you need to have to save a life.”‘We will be there’While training in the US dwindles, the country’s increasingly conservative approach to abortion has also put it at odds with much of the rest of the world. Only four countries – including the US – have tightened their abortion laws over the last 30 years, while more than 60 countries and territories have loosened theirs, according to a tally by the Center for Reproductive Rights.Mexico is one of them. In 2023, its supreme court decriminalized abortion nationwide; the procedure is now available in about half of all Mexican states. And providers aren’t the only people taking advantage of Mexico’s liberalized abortion laws: last year, Fundación MSI provided first-trimester abortions to 62 women from the United States.“Training, training, training – it is key, to have less danger for actual patients,” said Araceli López-Nava, managing director of MSI Latin America. “We understand how difficult the situation is becoming in the US, so we’re happy to help.”The organization has the capacity to train up to 300 doctors a year to perform abortions, López-Nava estimated.View image in fullscreenMSI is not, however, a solution for everybody. Would-be trainees need to speak Spanish. And although the organization has in past years trained medical students, MSI’s Mexico clinics have started focusing on teaching residents who have already performed 20 abortions. Because residents have already chosen their specialties and secured berths in residency programs – which can be highly competitive – they are more likely to become abortion providers.Training in Mexico can also be pricey, especially since the program does not pay for travel and lodging. Ramos’s entire trip cost about $5,000, although a scholarship helped him cover most of the costs.“It’s a way, at least for me, to be exposed to a different medical system, learn from different providers from a different country, exchange knowledge,” Ramos said. “I feel like I’m being adequately prepared to meet the needs of my patients in the US.” More

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      in UK Politics

      NHS medicines could be at risk due to Trump tariffs and global trade friction, ministers warned

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      The availability of around 85 per cent of NHS medicines could be at risk unless the UK government strengthens its supply chains to prepare for worsening geopolitical tensions, ministers have been warned.Manufacturers in Britain have urged the government to treat it as a defence issue, with the supply of drugs such as antibiotics under threat if global tensions continue to rise as a result of Donald Trump’s decision to impose hefty tariffs across the world.If pharmaceutical and medical suppliers are hit by the US-led tariff war, the NHS could have to pay more for medicines, another expert has said.The warnings come after health secretary Wes Streeting said UK medicines supplies could be impacted by the tariffs imposed on trade by President Trump.Mr Streeting said during an interview on Sky News that there are a “number of factors at play” when it comes to the UK’s supply of medicines, including manufacturing and distribution challenges, and he warned that tariffs pose “another layer of challenge”.The health secretary was responding after the US president said he was not looking to pause the sweeping tariffs that have plunged global markets into turmoil. Although the US tariffs have so far exempted the pharmaceutical industry, some medical devices and equipment are affected, so UK manufacturers would still be hit by 10 and 20 per cent tariffs when exporting to the US.Some companies which rely heavily on exports to the US are likely to consider moving their manufacturing from the UK to America, according to RBC analysts quoted in Endpoints News, which could push prices higher for Britons. The UK also imports £4.5bn in medical products from the US, where companies may raise prices due to tariffs on imported raw materials.Health secretary Wes Streeting said ministers are watching the situation ‘extremely closely’ More