STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
We have an assessment of U.S. cuts to science. The Trump administration wants to reduce payments to universities across the country for medical research. It also aims to punish elite universities over diversity and other issues. Courts have blocked some moves for now, but William Haseltine says the U.S. is abandoning policies that changed the country since World War II. We're having a whole series of conversations about the world America made since the end of that war - a world that shaped the life of Haseltine, who was born in 1944. He's a scientist acclaimed for work on HIV and AIDS, mapping the human genome and more.
WILLIAM HASELTINE: Basically, I've had the wind at my back, thanks to federal funding and federal interest in science, since the time I was in high school. I'm a benefit of the Sputnik generation.
INSKEEP: The Soviet Union put the first satellite into orbit in 1957, prompting the U.S. to invest in science education. Haseltine listed an astonishing range of ways his country helped him after that. He attended college soon after Sputnik and discovered new grants for students interested in science. The National Science Foundation connected him with mentors at the University of California, Berkeley. He gained support for research as a grad student and received grants after that.
HASELTINE: Very, very generous funding from the National Institutes of Health for my research on cancer viruses, which then opened up a whole field. I was one of the leaders in HIV/AIDS research and opened that entire field.
INSKEEP: Eventually, he went into business and got in on the early stages of the emerging field of biotechnology, which became a whole industry supported by federal legislation.
HASELTINE: Universities had a positive obligation to transfer their new knowledge to businesses, and that really caused a feeding frenzy of venture capitalists. Probably two-thirds of medicines today derive from those programs, and it's continuing.
INSKEEP: There's a couple of aspects of this I want to follow up on, and the first is your early education - high school, college, graduate school. I would presume you're doing things then that nobody is going to profit from. There's no profit motive. There's no reason that a private business would ever pay for that, and so the government has to do it. Is that the way you see it?
HASELTINE: That's exactly right. And one of the reasons the U.S. is such a strong economy today is based on the 75 years of deep investment in fundamental knowledge.
INSKEEP: Is there any other country that does it that way, or does it better?
HASELTINE: Until recently, there was no country that could compete with the United States, postwar, in the creation of knowledge and use of that knowledge to create new businesses. There is now another such country, and that country is China. They have a massive investment in their young people, in education. And today, in almost every field I look, they are equal to or very closely equal to the United States - and in many cases now exceed the United States - in publication and creation of new fundamental knowledge.
INSKEEP: So let's look at what the Trump administration has done in recent months. It's hard to list everything, but they have cut funding for the National Science Foundation. They've gone after a few elite universities and cut grants to other kinds of universities. They've gone after efforts to encourage diversity in science and in STEM fields. When you hear about all of that together, what does it make you think about?
HASELTINE: Well, it's very clear to me that we're in a transition. I was the first of my generation of graduate students to go for postgraduate work in the United States, rather than to Europe. That represented the transition from European dominance in science and technology to American dominance. That same transition, I think, is going on right now, with a transition from America lead to China lead. I think that the severe damage - it's already been done.
INSKEEP: Is it possible that we have primed the pump, so to speak, and we do not need as much government intervention? Tech firms have amazing amounts of money. Biotech firms have amazing amounts of money. Pharmaceutical firms have amazing amounts of money. Maybe they can pay for the research from now on.
HASELTINE: There is no way that you can substitute for the $50 billion a year that the government puts into the National Institutes of Health, and the other large amounts of money that the government spends. I'm a grandchild of the famous scientists that were forced to leave Europe by Hitler and by the disruptions of World War II. Whether they were Italian or German or English, they formed the nucleus of our academic excellence, and they attracted students. And their students trained me and my generation, and we have trained many others. Once you cut off that flow, which seems to be happening right now, you are impairing the future not for one generation, but for many generations.
INSKEEP: Dr.William Haseltine, thanks so much for your time. Really appreciate it.
HASELTINE: You're welcome. Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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