President Donald Trump has a plan to eliminate pediatric cancer.
Scratch that. President Donald Trump has a plan to eliminate pediatric cancer research. In its place? $50 million to “AI-driven” pediatric cancer “research.”
On Tuesday, Trump signed a characteristically vague order directing the stupid Make America Healthy Again Commission to work with the Office of Science and Technology Policy on whatever the hell this is supposed to be.
Here’s OSTP Director Michael Kratsios with a meaningless buzzword salad to explain the project.
"Leveraging this data infrastructure, researchers will deploy artificial intelligence to improve clinical trials, sharpen diagnoses, fine tune treatments, unlock cures and strengthen prevention strategies," he said.
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If you’re wondering why the OSTP is leading this research rather than, say, the National Institutes of Health or the National Cancer Institute, join the club. It certainly isn’t because Kratsios has any experience in cancer research, or even health research generally. No, Kratsios is Silicon Valley venture capitalist Peter Thiel’s former chief of staff—and Thiel also just happens to be one of Trump’s richest backers.
So, an unqualified rich dude—like everyone in this benighted administration, basically.
Pray tell, what does AI-driven cancer research entail? Apparently, things like building “scalable models” to determine how a child would respond to cancer therapies and minimize treatment side effects, while also magically forecasting the progression of any cancer.
Does it even need to be said that this is a pile of nonsense and is in no way how actual pediatric cancer research works? We used to have actual pediatric cancer research! Lots of it! But then the administration made life hell for science professionals at the National Cancer Institute and demanded it slash spending by more than one-third. The administration’s proposed budget for the NCI for next year slashes it by 37%, while the NIH faces a 40% cut.
Hundreds of millions of dollars of research grants were withheld, with the administration saying that cancer-related research was actually the forbidden DEI. Sure, the Government Accountability Office found that the NIH violated the Impoundment Control Act when it canceled almost 2,000 research grants due to wokeness, but the administration doesn’t care one bit what the GAO thinks.
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Those cuts have gutted actual science-based cancer research, including pediatric cancer research. So, the scientist who had been working for years on a treatment for medulloblastoma, an aggressive pediatric brain cancer, no longer has her research funded by the NIH—but we’re going to spend $50 million on AI slop instead.
Unsurprisingly, there are no details available on how this will work or how contracts will be awarded. Instead, there’s just the usual Trump-y bluster from the White House.
“The President is committed to making the United States the world leader in biomedicine in the 21st Century, just as it was in the 20th Century, and the idea that the President isn't committed to cutting cancer is just incorrect,” a White House official said.
People rally at Health and Human Services headquarters to protest the polices of President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Feb. 19.
Rather than actual research, this looks a lot like another giveaway to the tech companies that have kissed Trump’s ring. Thus far, they’ve gotten to play toy soldiers by saying they will fuse “cutting edge tech expertise with military innovation,” which is almost as meaningless as Kratsios’ explanation of how AI pediatric cancer research will work.
We’ve already seen what it looks like when this administration deploys AI. Remember the AI tool developed by one of the DOGE dweebs that “munched” through Department of Veterans’ Affairs contracts? It arbitrarily decided that over 1,000 contracts were worth exactly $34 million and killed 2,000 other contracts. Terrific job.
So, we have no idea how this AI-driven research will work, but it will definitely not be some wussy woke thing, thanks to Trump’s incoherent executive order forbidding wokeness in AI.
All of this is emblematic of the administration’s overall approach to governance: fire the experts, then give a bunch of money to your pals instead. And hey, if cancer research for little kids gets destroyed in the process? Just the cost of doing business, Trump-style.
