The Great American Brain Drain

For any of my readers that have been following along with my blog recently, I have recently introduced a new module in an effort to modernize this blog, and bring it up to date with everything that the current Trump administration has been doing to rapidly dismantle the protections that the federal government provides to American citizens and other residents. However, before doing that, I want to discuss something else that has been weighing on my mind in recent months - a concept that is sometimes referred to as a "brain drain".

The brain is a vital organ system in the body. Without a brain, the rest of the body becomes a lifeless lump of flesh. We shouldn't encourage the brain leaving our country's body.

What exactly is a "brain drain"? It is basically a phenomenon that occurs whenever a government starts taking hostile actions against the highly educated professionals within a given society, prompting many, if not most of them to leave the country in droves. You normally will see this situation happening in developing countries where opportunities to seek employment in STEM or medical fields are virtually non-existent. As a college student, you may wonder why so many faculty members within your particular institution are from foreign countries. The lack of opportunities in their host nations are one of the major reasons they immigrate and seek employment here in the United States instead of their host nation. These individuals will often seek opportunities in other countries where such opportunities do exist, leaving their host country drained of its brainpower. If nothing changes, these people will continue to leave the country as quickly as they're considered desirable enough to do so in more developed countries with more opportunities for upward mobility and career progression.

For anyone that has seriously contemplated immigrating to a foreign country, you may find the process overwhelming. Perhaps in a later post, I may provide a brief primer on what immigrating out of the United States would entail, including the requirements and credentials that make certain applicants more desirable than others. In fact, if the United States is continuing to head in the trajectory that I think it is, this information may actually prove beneficial to some of my readers in the near-future.

In any case, for those of you who have been following the news lately, you may have noticed that a certain unelected foreign national (cough Elon Musk cough) and another certain recovering druggy with a worm-eaten brain (cough RFK Jr. cough) has taken a figurative chainsaw to the federal government, hacking and slashing several programs in an effort to free up the federal budget to provide tax breaks to the wealthy. One of the most notable of these agencies, in my opinion is the National Institute of Health (NIH), which is a federal agency under the executive-level branch of The Department of Health and Human Services. As a graduating PhD student in a biomedical sciences program within the United States, these cuts will likely affect me at a personal and professional level.

And the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, the worms play pinochle on your snout, they eat your eyes, they eat your nose, they eat the jelly between your toes.

While it is still unclear just how much of the NIH's budget will be gutted under the current administration, up until recently, the NIH typically works with an annual budget of approximately $47 billion a year, of which approximately 80% of it goes to fund research programs at schools, universities and other research institutions outside of the NIH itself, including prominent institutions such as Harvard and UCLA, often in the form of research grants. These research grants are vital for advancing our knowledge of several major diseases and other chronic health issues within the United States, as well as globally. By slashing funding to the NIH, vital research in fields such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and many other major health threats will be severely compromised in their capacity to advance our clinical knowledge to the level that is necessary to make it translational and bring it to the clinical bedside of patients which suffer from these conditions.

It is important to note that a recent study conducted in 2023 notes that approximately 99% of all drugs approved under the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) within the United States of America were either funded in part or in whole by the NIH. Without the vital funding provided by this federal agency, it is likely that new treatments and therapies will slow to a near-crawl, which in my opinion should be extremely alarming to anyone that currently needs or will need medical treatment anytime in the future.

While all of this is all well and good (or perhaps very bad), I digress. Perhaps, in a later post, I will expand on the importance of the NIH and what the current Secretary of Health is doing to undermine its mission and duty to the American people. For now, we will return to the topic at hand, the so-called brain drain.

What you may not know is that as many as 75% of biomedical and clinical research scientists are seriously considering the leaving the United States [2] to try their luck elsewhere in the world. Although the United States has held the noteworthy honor and prestige as being the best country for biomedical research, the instability and uncertainty of the current administration may soon cause this to change [3]. In fact, other countries, such as China have already expressed interest in taking US expatriates into their own research institutions [3]. You can say whatever you want about China, however, if the idea of foreign countries snatching up all the talent from our country doesn't concern you, it should. Processes like these are slow and gradual with a considerable amount of inertia, so once these individuals leave our country, it will be difficult to reverse the momentum back in the other direction again, should the government decide to get their heads out of their asses and fix this situation. It could take years, if not decades to fix the damage caused by the current administration and restore the United States' reputation as being the best country in the world for all academic research, including biomedical and clinical research. If things do not change, and soon, we will go from the greatest nation in the world for academic research, to the greatest laughingstock of the world.

I am loathe to admit that I myself am strongly considering the possibility of leaving the United States to improve my own long-term career prospects, but unfortunately, I am concerned that is where we are currently at with this country and current administration. As I have mentioned earlier in this post, I will provide a brief overview in a later post which discusses the process that is involved for United States citizens that are seriously considering leaving the country, and what the potential consequences may be for doing so. While the jury is still out as to whether the American Brain Drain is a real threat or merely a perceived one, it is my personal opinion that we're all going to have to buckle up for a bumpy ride. Stay frosty, everyone. It's a jungle out there. Until next time.

References

1. Galkina Cleary E, Jackson MJ, Zhou EW, Ledley FD. Comparison of Research Spending on New Drug Approvals by the National Institutes of Health vs the Pharmaceutical Industry, 2010-2019. JAMA Health Forum. 2023 Apr 7;4(4):e230511. doi: 10.1001/jamahealthforum.2023.0511. PMID: 37115539; PMCID: PMC10148199.

2. Witze, A. (2025). 75% of US scientists who answered Nature poll consider leaving. Nature, 640(8058), 298-299.

3. Tollefson, J., & Van Noorden, R. (2024). The US is the world’s science superpower—but for how long?. Nature, 634(8035), 770-774.