The Vanishing Point

The Vanishing Point is an upcoming documentary series about the impact of funding cuts to the institution of American science. 

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When my sister was diagnosed with brain cancer in June of 2024, our family clung to the promise of science. As her disease progressed, she entered a clinical trial for a novel treatment that was made possible by decades of publicly funded research. But after living with cancer for ten months, she died.

 

Around the same time, I watched in disbelief as the Trump administration withdrew billions in NIH funding, including funding for cancer trials. In fact, among the canceled grants was a study developing a new glioblastoma treatment, the same disease that killed my sister. Funding has also been withdrawn from the landmark Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium, with little explanation given, just the brutal implication that rare cancers are not worth studying. 

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This news became the starting point for my investigation into how these cuts are unraveling the country’s scientific infrastructure. The NIH has frozen or withdrawn billions, forcing universities to lay off thousands of researchers. I visited NASA’s GISS Lab during its final days, where scientists packed up decades of climate data and servers were sent to storage. NOAA faced sweeping layoffs too, crippling both research and basic weather forecasting.

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The effects reach beyond budgets. PhD student Samsara Upadhya saw her NIH grant, focused on cell replication, revoked for being part of a diversity supplement program. Dr. Dennis Burton’s 15-year HIV vaccine project was terminated weeks before moving to human trials. “Government jobs are no longer secure,” one NOAA climate researcher told me. “Universities also aren’t hiring. People are wondering what to do next.”

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Through these stories, I’m documenting the loss of expertise, collaboration, and imagination that took generations to build. My goal is to make visible what’s being erased and to show that these aren’t just statistics or line items, but human lives, discoveries, and futures.