The assault on US science: a deep dive with Ashish Jha

Abstract

The BMJ’s editor met with Ashish Jha, dean of public health and former covid response coordinator to President Biden, to discuss the state of science and public health in the US ### Biography Ashish Jha is dean of the Brown University School of Public Health and previously professor of global health at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. Jha received his MD from Harvard Medical School and then trained in internal medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. He completed his general medicine fellowship at Brigham & Women’s Hospital at Harvard Medical School and received his masters from Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. In March 2022 Jha was appointed White House covid-19 response coordinator by President Joe Biden, a position he held until June 2023. Kamran Abbasi : Welcome, Ashish. It’s a pleasure to have you here. There’s so much happening in the US right now. Can you give us an overview? Ashish Jha : Thanks for having me, Kamran. It has indeed been a tumultuous couple of months. We’ve had elections, and things have changed dramatically. This is an unprecedented time for the health sector, public health, medicine, and the entire scientific enterprise in the US. There are substantial threats and attacks on all those sectors, which is very worrying and will leave America much worse off. What’s surprising is that a lot of this was signalled, especially if you look at President Donald Trump’s Project 2025 and its agenda. People thought, “Well, surely they won’t do all of that,” but they seem to …