Surgeon and best-selling author Atul Gawande on Monday provided a close-up account of the damage inflicted by the Trump administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency of International Development, but with a note of encouragement to students and faculty to stay committed to science and medicine.
Gawande, a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and faculty member at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Medical School, took leave from the University in 2021 after President Joe Biden nominated him to head USAID’s Bureau for Global Health, a post he called “the best job in medicine that you’ve likely never heard of.” He stepped down at the end of Biden’s term.
“USAID cannot be restored to what it was, but it is not too late to save our health and science infrastructure and our…