On the evening of Feb. 15, when the dreaded letter of termination arrived, an NCI employee was just a few weeks away from job security—the end of the probationary period.
Knowledge is power, and this information, true for many cancers, is valuable for everyone to know—either to have an awareness of their own bodies and the factors that they can control, or to create spaces for empathy with persons they might encounter with cancer.
An estimated 5,200 of HHS employees have been fired during the course of this week. Since the firings are ongoing, no final tally of their extent exists. At this writing, approximately 1,200 of the fired HHS employees were working at NIH, about 700 at FDA, and 750 at CDC.
As cancer clinicians, we spend years learning how to think objectively and rationally when supporting patients who have responded to a cancer diagnosis with anger and fear.