All of Us 

Lou Hurst

What none of us saw coming was 
the carelessness of it, the in-
direction of Directors when
the Centers were unheld; we all 
were scattered, randomized; we lost 
our Dear Colleagues; no-one we knew 
could reconcile our Councils, or 
determine termination dates;
and many of us were let go;
more followed; and the rest of us, 
anonymized, were thereupon
subjected to the whims of those
of us who sought to end this ec-
umenical experiment;
and some of us, at any rate, 
found other datasets to use,
but nothing healed the hurt of it:
to have to think that those of us 
who wanted, most of all, to care— 
to count—to try to reckon with
the countless variations of 
ourselves, should be excluded now;
that we who in our science have
been catholic, holistic, al-
ways seeking variables for 
inclusion, after all will have
no external validity…
We mourn, and to resist would be
heroic and historic, but 
we all have bills to pay; so we
are left to our Divisions, and
our selves; we’ll miss our data, and
without it all of us will hurt 
alike, and unalike; we all 
know all of us means each; we know
we have a need in common, in
our own covariances; for
we all are individual-
ly lost; we all have debts to pay,
and each go out alone to meet
the final fate of all of us.

The Science

This poem is intended to reflect the chaos currently being felt in the academic sciences in the United States, particularly in relation to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), in the early days of the Trump Administration. Since January 2025 a series of Executive Orders and other federal actions targeting institutional science, and particularly elements of science related to human difference (under the term ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ or ‘DEI’), have led to major disruptions including delays in grant funding, cancellations of grants and fellowships, a communications freeze, resignations, firings, and lawsuits. There is a pervasive climate of uncertainty, instability, confusion, fear, and demoralization which will have long-lasting effects on the scientific enterprise in the USA. 

This poem plays on language from a pre-Trump NIH research initiative called ‘All of Us’ - an initiative whose vision underscores the values of diversity and inclusion for high-quality biomedical and clinical science and effective healthcare - to consider how the political assault on diversity initiatives is tragically damaging to all of civil society as well as the practice of science. The All of Us Research Program is a historic effort to collect and study data from one million or more people living in the United States. The goal of the program is better health for all of us. Our mission is to accelerate health research and medical breakthroughs, enabling individualized prevention, treatment, and care for all of us.

The Poet

Lou Hurst is an emerging writer who works by day as a research grants developer at a university in Kentucky, USA. She is also an independent scholar who studies the history of literary criticism, especially in relation to evolutionism and anthropology. 

Next poem: Chaos Paradox by Özge Lena