Despite dubbing himself the “Father of IVF,” Donald Trump actually won’t be funding federal infertility research.
The administration fired a team of researchers focused on infertility research and assisted reproductive technology Tuesday afternoon, the latest group to lose their jobs in sweeping new cuts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“It is vital that the CDC, our nation’s public health agency, employs doctors and scientists who understand infertility, a disease that impacts one in six people worldwide,” Barbara Collura, President and CEO of the national infertility group RESOLVE, said in a statement. “Following today’s layoffs at the CDC, there will be no experts on infertility who will be able to inform public policy, brief members of Congress, publish articles and reports, and advance public awareness on the causes and treatments for infertility.”
The team was responsible for tracking IVF cycles & creating and maintaining infertility-related databases. Speaking with HuffPost’s Alanna Vagianos, Collura said that questions remain regarding the future of that data—if it will be updated, and who would be doing the updating.
“That’s a lot of information and knowledge that walked out the door today,” Collura said.
The cut comes barely a week after Trump referred to himself as the “fertilization president” during a Women’s History Month event. Trump bragged about his purported efforts to expand IVF access and promised that there would be “tremendous goodies in the bag for women,” including “the fertilization and all the other things we’re talking about.”
So far, the Trump administration—directed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency—has fired more than 100,000 federal employees. But tens of thousands more government jobs are expected to be on the chopping block as Trump pursues a second round of “voluntary” buyouts.
More than 10,000 jobs are expected to be cut at the Department of Health and Human Services, which encompasses the CDC. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has proposed downsizing the agency’s 82,000-person workforce by nearly a quarter. Other shuttered departments were responsible for research and policy recommendations on older adults, disabilities, HIV, minority health, mine safety, and smoking.