AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Thousands of federal health agency workers lost their jobs last week. Whole laboratories and divisions were shut down not just in Washington, D.C., but in West Virginia and Florida and Washington State. It's part of an overhaul of the Department of Health and Human Services under its new secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
NPR's Science Desk was working long hours last week, talking to workers who lost their jobs and those left behind. Selena Simmons-Duffin covers HHS, Rob Stein covers the National Institutes of Health, and Sydney Lupkin covers the Food and Drug Administration. Welcome.
SELENA SIMMONS-DUFFIN, BYLINE: Hi.
ROB STEIN, BYLINE: Nice to be here.
SYDNEY LUPKIN, BYLINE: Hi.
RASCOE: Selena, let's start with you. How many people lost their jobs across HHS?
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: Well, what Secretary Kennedy said two weeks ago was that 10,000 people would be cut on top of about 10,000 employees who have already taken early retirement or otherwise left. And just to remind people, HHS is the umbrella health agency. It oversees the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, along with NIH, FDA, Medicare and more.
We don't know exactly how many layoff notices went out, let alone the details of who was cut. HHS did not respond to NPR's request for comment on those numbers. Even managers at HHS don't have that information. In some cases, they've had to email to figure out who was still working on their teams. There have been some crowdsourcing efforts to figure out exactly who is gone and put it into a spreadsheet.
One team that I heard was gone at CDC - I asked a source of mine to go and look at their office and he confirmed it was just empty cubicles. But that just gives you a sense of how people have been piecing together what happened here.
RASCOE: And, Sydney, what about FDA?
LUPKIN: Yeah. At FDA, we don't know the full picture either, but an official who was laid off and fears retribution for speaking publicly told me more than 800 people were fired from the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. That's the division that's responsible for new drug approvals, as well as monitoring unexpected side effects and making label changes.
Many of them were funded by user fees paid by the industry, so not taxpayers. And that division, like a lot of the federal government, already had a hard time attracting and retaining staff because people with that expertise can make a lot more money in the private sector.
RASCOE: And, Rob, what about NIH? What was the impact there?
STEIN: So I'm told about 1,300 employees were laid off at the sprawling NIH campus just outside Washington, D.C. And I'm hearing there's widespread anger, despair, fear, confusion. Most of those who were cut appear to have been involved in administrative jobs, like dozens of people whose job was to communicate with the public, update websites, IT workers, HR people, specialists who handle contracts and grants.
Now these may sound like expendable, bureaucratic jobs, but the scientists searching for cures for everything from asthma, allergies and Alzheimer's to AIDS, cancer and heart disease, literally can't do their jobs without this kind of support. And on top of all of that, a slew of top leaders, along with some senior scientists, have been placed on administrative leave.
RASCOE: And now in addition to the layoffs, HHS has also been ordered to cut spending on outside contracts. What can you tell us about that?
LUPKIN: Yeah, that's right. HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon confirmed in an email to NPR that the department must cut 35% of what it spends on contracts. So the contracts could include things like cleaning services or computer support, but they could also be contracts for specialized equipment for medical research, such as freezer storage for biospecimens or work with outside laboratories for tests. They often cover functions that are specialized and just not large enough to warrant hiring full-time employees.
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: At CDC, I'm told they're supposed to find $2.9 billion in contracts to cut. A former official I spoke with, who didn't want to be named for fear of retribution, says that is a, quote, "mission-killing amount." There is no way to skim off that and get that kind of money. And it'll shut down programs required by Congress.
Already, CDC was really hit hard in the firings. Whole branches and divisions were shut down. A division that researched worker safety is 80% gone. The department that worked on violence prevention was slashed, and an FDA lab that monitored food safety in San Francisco was closed down, too. So this is not just consolidating or streamlining that's happening here.
RASCOE: Sydney, you reported last week about the people who handle the Freedom of Information Act request at these agencies. Tell us about that.
LUPKIN: Yeah. The layoffs last week included entire teams responsible for fulfilling public requests for government documents. And this was sort of a surprise because even before Kennedy was confirmed, he was saying that he wanted to bring, quote, "radical transparency to HHS." So these are the workers who handle requests and provide these records for everyone in the public, not just journalists. And I'm told these firings will mean that people getting these records - it'll just be slower and harder.
STEIN: But, you know, as an example of all the confusion swirling around all of this, I'm told six employees in the main NIH FOIA office who had been cut have now been asked to return, at least temporarily, but I'm told the NIH will have to offset anyone who does come back with corresponding cuts elsewhere.
RASCOE: And what's the bigger picture here? Are more people who were fired going to be unfired?
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: It is unclear right now. Health Secretary Kennedy told reporters on Thursday that the department will reinstate as much as 20% of those who were cut. In fact, he said that that was the plan all along and that they knew some mistakes would inevitably be made. He has not yet said who that will be. For instance, he suggested a team on CDC that works on lead poisoning was cut mistakenly, but then the agency said that it wasn't a mistake. Right now, it's just a lot of rumors and a lot of confusion and a lot of worries about what might be coming next.
RASCOE: That was Selena Simmons-Duffin, Rob Stein and Sydney Lupkin. Thank you so much for joining us today. We'll know you'll stay on this, and we'll be listening for your reports.
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: Thanks for having us.
STEIN: Sure thing.
LUPKIN: You bet. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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