National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientists warn the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is playing “Russian roulette” with patients’ lives after the agency tried to fire ICU doctors at its hospital.
The New York Times reported Monday that DOGE planned to fire medical personnel in the intensive care unit at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, which doubles as an active hospital and research site. The cuts would have included members of the “code blue team” that responds when a patient goes into cardiac arrest.
The reduction in staff would have forced the clinic to “literally have to airlift patients out,” a senior physician told the Times.
More than a thousand demonstrators protested the cuts earlier this month, which prompted DOGE to reverse course. In addition to calling off the firing of medical personnel, the NIH also brought back recently-axed laboratory technicians and blood bank workers.
Others at the NIH have not been so lucky.
Some senior NIH scientists, whose contracts were typically renewed automatically, are now “being put on leave without pay when their contracts run out,” the Times reports.
One senior scientist at the agency told the Times that program cuts mean he can no longer order necessary supplies—like mice—for his lab, putting in jeopardy “several years’ worth of work.”
Since Elon Musk unleashed his DOGE goons on the federal government, more than 62,000 federal workers have been let go, Newsweek reported earlier this month, though court orders have put many layoffs and buyout offers on hold.
Reports of the “chaos” DOGE has unleashed at NIH are just the tip of the iceberg, according to one NIH staffer who spoke to the Times.
“Whatever people are reading in newspapers,” they said, “it’s 10 times worse.”
