Harvard scientists say research could be set back years after funding freeze

Cambridge, Mass. – The research of the professor of the University of Harvard Alberto Ascherio is literally frozen.

Collected with millions of American soldiers for two decades using millions of dollars with taxpayers, the epidemiology and nutrition scientist has blood samples stored in liquid nitrogen freezers in the University’s public health school.

Samples are essential to his award -winning research, which seek a remedy for multiple sclerosis and other neurodegenerative diseases. But for months, Ascherio could not work with samples because he lost $ 7 million in federal research funding, a victim of Harvard’s struggle with the Trump administration.

“It is as if we have created a peak telescope to explore the universe, and now we have no money to launch it,” said Ascherio. “We have built everything and now we are ready to use it to make a new discovery that could have an impact on millions of people around the world, then” POOF. You are cut. “”

The loss of around 2.6 billion dollars in federal funding in Harvard made that of the most eminent researchers in the world dismiss young researchers. These are years or even decades of research, in everything, from dependence on opioids to cancer.

And despite Harvard’s prosecution against the administration and the settlements of settlement between the parties at war, the researchers are confronted with the fact that some of their work could never resume.

The financing cuts are part of a several month old battle that the Trump administration has led against certain universities of the country, notably Columbia, Brown and Northwestern. The administration adopted a particularly aggressive position against Harvard, which concerns funding after the oldest university in the country rejected a series of government demands issued by a federal working group on anti -Semitism.

The government had demanded radical changes at Harvard linked to campus demonstrations, academics and admissions – intended to approach the accusations of the government that the university had become a home for liberalism and tolerated anti -Jewish harassment.

Harvard responded by fileing a federal prosecution, accusing the Trump administration of carrying out a reprisal campaign against the university. In the trial, he explained reforms which he had shot to fight against anti -Semitism but also swore not to “make his independence or renounce his constitutional rights”.

“Make no mistake: Harvard rejects anti -Semitism and discrimination in all its forms and actively makes structural reforms to eradicate anti -Semitism on the campus,” said the university in its legal complaint. “But rather than getting involved with Harvard concerning these continuous efforts, the government has announced a freeze freezing for medical, scientific, technological and others that have nothing to do with anti -Semitism.”

The Trump administration denies that the cuts were made in retaliation, saying that the subsidies were being examined even before the requests were sent in April. He argues that the government has a large discretionary power to cancel federal contracts for policy reasons.

The funding discounts have left Harvard’s research community in a state of shock, feeling as if they were unjustly targeted in a fight have nothing to do with them. Some have been forced to close laboratories or rush to find non -governmental funding to replace lost money.

In May, Harvard announced that he would set up at least $ 250 million in his own money to continue research efforts, but the president of Alan Garber University warned of “decisions and difficult sacrifices”.

Ascherio said that the University had been able to gather funding to pay the salaries of its researchers until next June. But it has always been left without resources necessary to finance critical research tasks, such as laboratory work. Even a year can put his research over five years, he said.

“It’s really devastating,” said Rita Hamad, director of social policies for the health center research center in Harvard, who had three multi -year subsidies totaling $ 10 million canceled by the Trump administration. The subsidies financed research on the impact of school segregation on heart health, how the pandemic era policies in more than 250 counties affected mental health and the role of neighborhood factors in dementia.

At the public health school, where Hamad is based, 190 subsidies were dismissed, affecting around 130 scientists.

“Thinking about all the knowledge that will not be acquired or that will be actively lost,” said Hamad. She expects significant layoffs in her team if the financing freezing continues for a few more months. “It’s just a mixture of frustration, anger and sadness all the time, every day.”

John Quackenbush, professor of computer biology and bioinformatics at the School of Public Health, has spent the last months reducing the cups on several fronts.

In April, a subsidy of several million dollars was not renewed, endangering a study on the role played by sex in illness. In May, he lost around $ 1.2 million in federal funding for the coming year due to Harvard’s frost. Four ministerial subsidies worth 24 million dollars which financed the training of doctoral students were also canceled as part of the fight with the Trump administration, said Quackenbush.

“I am in a position where I really have to think:” Can I relaunch this research? “” He said. “Can I restart these programs even if Harvard and the Trump administration have reached a kind of regulation? If it reaches a regulation, how fast can funding be rulled? Can he be rolled? “

The researchers all agreed that the financing cuts had little or nothing to do with the struggle of the university against anti -Semitism. Some, however, argue that Harvard changes were expected for a long time and pressure from the Trump administration was necessary.

Bertha Madras, a Harvard psychobiologist who lost funding to create free training and parents to prevent opioid overdose among teenagers and drug use, said she was happy to see the slaughter of what she called “social science studies”.

Madras said that the pressure of the White House has catalyzed an essential reform at university, where several study programs have “really left the wall in terms of orthodoxy which is not representative of the country as a whole”.

But Madras, who sat at the presidential commission on opioids during Trump’s first term, said that the research of scientists in hostage as a negotiation currency did not make sense.

“I do not know if the reform would have occurred without the President of the United States pointing to the bone finger in Harvard,” she said. “But to sacrifice science is problematic, and it is very worrying because it is one of the main pillars of the country’s strength.”

Quackenbush and other Harvard researchers argue that the cuts are part of a broader attack on the science of the Trump administration which puts the reputation of the country as a world leader in in danger. Support for students and postdoctoral scholarship holders has been reduced, visa for foreign researchers threatened, and new directives and financing cuts in NIH will make it much more difficult to obtain federal funding in the future, they said. It will also be difficult to replace federal funding with private sector money.

“We are all heading for this future in which this 80 -year partnership between the government and the universities will be compromised,” said Quackenbush. “We are going to face real challenges to continue directing the world in scientific excellence.”