this post was submitted on 09 May 2025
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politics

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[–] Nightwingdragon@lemmy.world 120 points 4 days ago (16 children)

He's not "trying to undo" it. He's largely already undone it.

He has done permanent and irreversable damage to our relationships with our allies around the world. Countries like Denmark and Canada now have to look at us as potential adversaries as we repeatedly threaten to use military force to annex their territories.

He has obliterated our ability to maintain strong political and economic ties. Sure, with every administration comes tweaks to various foreign and economic policies, but American policies in general have been considered stable and reliable over the long term. Countries now believe, and have every right to believe, anything the US says only has a shelf life of 4 years before the next administration comes in and flips the table on a whim, and that anything Trump says only has a shelf life of until he has a conversation with someone else and randomly changes his mind. Businesses and governments can't be expected to function under those conditions, and it is going to take us decades at best to show the rest of the world that Trump and MAGA were just short blips on the radar and that the US can once again be trusted in the long term. That's assuming we ever get that trust back.

Even domestically, how many collective centuries of experience has been purged from federal government operations as a result of Trump's mass firings? Even if these agencies were re-opened and fully re-staffed tomorrow, how long would it take them to wind things back up and get back up to full strength? If they're re-instated after the Trump administration, how much damage would be caused in the interim, and how many years or even decades will it take to fix it? How much data that these agencies relied on has already been permanently lost?

How many years of scientific research has already been destroyed as time-sensitive experiments and studies get cancelled due to de-funding? Again, even if these institutions would be able to restart work tomorrow, how many experiments have already been invalidated in the interim? How many years are we now going to be behind in scientific research?

Same goes with vaccinations. Environmental damage. Race relations. The list goes on and on and on. What he has already destroyed in four months will likely take four decades to repair.

[–] Atelopus-zeteki@fedia.io 37 points 4 days ago (4 children)

They shut of the systems that kept research cell lines alive and viable. Those cell lines are gone. There is no replacement. Knowing this, in retrospect we should have have cell lines located in many locations, not just one. I can't stand it. This is 'crimes against humanity' level of action by this administration.

[–] BearGun@ttrpg.network 2 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Could you (or someone else here) expand on what that means? What were these cell lines used for on more concrete terms?

[–] Rookwood@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 3 days ago

Medical research.

[–] Atelopus-zeteki@fedia.io 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

There's some detail towards the beginning of this epitope (they like to say epitope rather than episode because they are nerdy virology folks, gotta love 'em) of TWIV #1215 What's the worst that could happen?: https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-1215/ I can't find a transcript, or I would point you to the specific quotes. I listen to most of this podcast since 2020,

This article (https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/08/health/harvard-biodata-trump-cuts-wellness) details some of the losses, of tissue samples used in long term research, such as The Nurses Health study (https://nurseshealthstudy.org/)

This article https://www.wired.com/story/cdc-job-cuts-niosh-human-samples/ - goes into some detail as well:

"NIOSH’s frozen tissues include commercially produced immortalized cell lines—cells that can proliferate indefinitely and enable small tissue samples to grow into larger ones that can more easily be experimented on." - These cell lines allow experimentation on animal cells, instead of using live animals. Which is beneficial for reducing cruelty to animals, as well as in decreasing costs, and increasing the shear volume of research that can be done.

There is a huge expense / loss engendered by such rapid closure of labs, in terms of lost equipment, lost cell lines from literally cutting power to the freezers and other equipment so the cell lines defrost and rot.

That's the best I can do for you at this time. You might want to look up topics like Primary Cell Line, Immortalized Cell Line.

[–] BearGun@ttrpg.network 2 points 3 days ago
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