‘It’s really, really bad right now’: NIH scientists dismayed by Trump cuts | Trump administration

LAST Week, the Management and Budget Office (OMB) revealed plans to freeze all external funding for the National Institutes of Health Research this exercise, but reversed the course later in the day, leaving the scientific community in a state of boost. A senior NIH official who spoke under the cover of anonymity said that it was only the last of a “multiplied” approach to the Trump administration to destroy American scientific research.

In July, the National Cancer Institute, which is part of the NIH, updated its website to reflect Trump administration plans to considerably reduce cancer research expenses. Since January, the administration has canceled NIH grants, in some cases, targeting other specific research areas, such as HIV treatment and prevention.

“It is really very bad at NIH at the moment,” said the manager, who added that researchers working outside the NIH were not aware of the seriousness of the situation until recently, even if they were also faced with the financing of upheavals since winter.

“The Trump administration is, for the first time in history, which intervenes considerably inside the NIH to carry it under political control,” said the official. “This is what we saw this week with the freezing of the OMB on funding.”

“I think that the heart is that they want to destroy universities, or at least transform them into right -wing ideological factories,” said the manager, because the majority of NIH subsidies are distributed to researchers in universities, medical schools and similar institutions.

In 2021, JD Vance delivered a discourse entitled Universities are the enemy. The official said they were alarmed about how few universities are fighting – many settled with the administration, who “made Columbia are completely shouting. One of the most important universities in America and a place that is a world magnet for talents. Same thing in Penn. Now they take it after the UCLA. ”

Institutions such as the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine also remained on the sidelines, refusing to resist Trump enough, said the official.

If the administration manages to freeze the financing of the NIH, it will push to cancel the funds permanently using a request for cancellation, said the manager. This type of movement requires only a simple majority of 50 votes to adopt the Senate, instead of the supermajure necessary to beat an obstacle. The Republicans would have enough votes for “RAM through these requests to effectively reduce the budget without the Democrats at Congress. It is a continuous disaster ”.

Researchers from many universities where the administration has frozen funding, such as the Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, begin to feel the seriousness of the situation, said the official. Carole Labonne, a biologist in Northwestern, said that “university laboratories are suspended by a thread”, explaining that even if the OMB has reversed its decision to freeze outside the financing of NIH, “the basic reality is not much better”.

Other recent changes to the NIH include the allocation of research grants in one time rather than over several years, so that fewer projects are funded. Reductions for cancer research financing also mean that only 4% of the requests for relevant grants will move forward. “This will do cancer research in this country and will destroy the career of many scientists. It is devastating,” said Labonne.

Extreme uncertainty surrounding scientific research also negatively affects the mental health of scientists. “I do not know any faculty that is not incredibly stressed at the moment, asking me how long they will be able to continue their laboratories and if they will have to let laboratory staff go,” said Labonne. “It is also very difficult to motivate yourself to write subsidies, a meticulous process and at high intensity of time, when there is a 96% chance that it is not financed.”

Ryan Gutenkunst, who heads the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Arizona, said: “Chaos at NIH is definitively scary [faculty and students] And waste huge amounts of emotional energy and time. We sent an email to the last break, only to find it not used a few hours later. »»

The senior NIH official found the events of last week without surprise, they said: “They throw everything on the wall to prevent the NIH from spending. What struck me is that many of my colleagues in universities were:” Oh, my God, they stop subsidies “. And it really seemed to activate people in a way that I had never seen before, when many did something else. “”

Science is an engine for American economic domination, and scientific clusters such as Silicon Valley could not exist without federal funding, said the official. “Once you broke them, it will be impossible to rebuild them. We are on the way to break them.”

Labonne said that she was worried about the impact of cancer progress specifically. “My own research tackles pediatric cancers. Forty years ago, more than 60% of children diagnosed with cancer would have died within five years of diagnosis. Today, there is a survival rate of 90%. We should not make progress like this in danger, “she said.

Although many major scientific institutions have complied with the administration, basic organizations and individual scientists, including those of the NIH, find ways to resist.

The senior NIH official said they hoped the most for the basic organizers who openly resist the Trump administration, rather than relying on older strategies such as disputes and negotiations with Congress. For example, Science Homecoming, a website to promote scientific communication, encourages scientists to publicize the importance of federal funding for their native cities.

Bethesda’s declaration, signed by 484 NIH employees, directly accused the director of NIH Jay Bhattacharya of “The failure of your legal obligation to use the funds appropriate by the Congress for Critical Research of the NIH. Every day that the NIH continues to disrupt research, your ability to deliver to these homework. ” Each day.