The Washington Post editorial board warned that Robert Kennedy’s deep cuts at the Department of Health and Human Services will damage the economy. They will also damage the nation’s health. Kennedy is not laying off paper-pushing bureaucrats. He is firing scientists and closing divisions working on drugs and cures for dangerous diseases and conditions.

The editorial board wrote:

The market took no time to weigh in on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s mass layoffs at the nation’s health agencies. As Health and Human Services employees arrived to work on Tuesday to discover their badges no longer worked, stock prices for health-care and biotech companies plunged. By the end of the day, the S&P’s index for the pharmaceutical industry had dropped 4 percent.

This should be a warning to the new HHS secretary and President Donald Trump: The employees of these institutions are as essential to the U.S. economy as they are to public health.

HHS officials have defended their planned 25 percent reduction in force (affecting about 20,000 employees) as a means to achieve efficiency. They claim it will save taxpayers about $1.8 billion annually. But this amount — minuscule relative to the multitrillion-dollar federal budget — could be wiped out by the economic damage that comes from discarding broad institutional knowledge.

The Food and Drug Administration, for instance, is slated to shed 3,500 staffers, or about 19 percent of its workforce. Among those who received layoff notices on Tuesday were many experts who assist with reviews at the Office of New Drugs. The director of this office, Peter Stein, resigned after being reassigned to patient affairs. Other top leaders have also been pushed out, including Hilary Marston, the FDA’s chief medical officer, and Peter Marks, its highest-ranking vaccine scientist.

HHS insists these layoffs will not weaken the agency’s core functions, especially drug approvals — but given how many high-level positions now sit vacant, this is hard to believe. Scott Gottlieb, who was FDA commissioner during Trump’s first term, said on X that the “barrage” threatens to bring “frustrating delays for American consumers, particularly affecting rare diseases and areas of significant unmet medical need.”

The National Institutes of Health, a sturdy engine of biomedical innovation, also saw many of its leaders defenestrated. Directors of at least four of the 27 institutes that make up the agency were removed from their posts, including Jeanne Marrazzo, the country’s most senior infectious-diseases official.

Meanwhile, hundreds of other layoffs at the agency’s research centers threaten to diminish its scientific prowess. The National Human Genome Research Institute, for one, which has made countless discoveries about the roles genes play in diseases, lost dozens of staffers as well as its acting chief, Vence L. Bonham Jr., who was installed just last month.

This turmoil comes amid the administration’s attempt to slash funding that NIH provides to outside research institutions. The administration seems not to care about U.S. investments in science that have been essential to building and maintaining a strong economy.

Equally concerning is what these layoffs could mean for public health. At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is set to lose 2,400 workers (an 18 percent reduction in staff), HHS cost-cutters have erased entire offices, including those dedicated to curbing HIV, tuberculosis, tobacco use, lead poisoning, substance abuse, birth defects and many other health threats. Kennedy — who also laid off many of the department’s communications staffers — has provided little rationale for any of these cuts. But if his goal is to save money, this is the wrong strategy. By keeping health-care costs down, public health programs often bring substantial returns on investment.

What makes these risky cuts especially baffling is that they’re being made only a few years after the covid-19 pandemic taught Americans about the need for a strong public health system, and amid the worst domestic measles outbreak in years. Bird flu also has begun spreading to humans — yet among those laid off were nearly all of the leading staffers at the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine, which is assisting the government with its bird flu response.

It’s true that HHS’s vast bureaucracy has long needed serious — even radical — reforms to eliminate waste and make its agencies more effective. The CDC often acted clumsily during the pandemic and struggled to communicate effectively with the public. And although the FDA was streamlined during the Biden administration, it could use innovative ideas to energize its food division — perhaps by making it a stand-alone agency.

But the job cuts this week do not amount to efficient reform. The Trump administration has shown great skill at “moving fast and breaking things,” to borrow the motto used by chief bureaucracy-smasher Elon Musk. But Trump and Kennedy should remember, too, that when “you break it, you buy it.” The damage they do to the country’s public health and biomedical research infrastructure is their responsibility, and they will bear the political consequences.