Bernie Sanders Finds How Much Trump Has Cut in Medical Research Funds

Under Donald Trump’s administration, the National Institutes of Health cut medical research into some of the leading causes of death in the United States by more than half a billion dollars.

A report released Friday by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, found that the NIH has drained $561 million in funding for research into cancer, diabetes, heart disease and Alzheimer’s.

Although research into these diseases is fully funded by Congress, the Trump administration has chosen to end at least 320 ongoing study grants and abandon thousands of patients in 304 clinical trials, including 69 trials on children. In addition to destroying years of work, the Trump administration’s actions have prompted an entire generation of medical researchers to question the viability of a career in the United States.

So how did the NIH decide what to remove? “The criteria for these decisions are not scientific. They are political,” the report says.

Interviews with staff revealed that the NIH used a list of banned words to determine which research projects merited further review, including terms such as “COVID,” “climate change,” “diversity,” “disadvantaged backgrounds,” as well as several terms for black men and women.

It’s worth analyzing what exactly the loss of the half-billion dollars detailed in the report cost Americans.

The report found that the NIH terminated or froze 116 cancer research grants, totaling $273 million. That total included $20 million for the Duke Specialized Program of Excellence in Brain Cancer Research in North Carolina, where researchers studied the leading cause of cancer death in children under 15 years old.

The NIH also ended or froze 65 Alzheimer’s research grants, totaling $94 million, upending years of research studies that were finally beginning to produce new drugs and diagnostic tools.

Additionally, the organization cut funding to 14 of the 35 NIH-funded Alzheimer’s research centers, totaling about $65 million. The agency also canceled meetings of the National Advisory Council on Aging, delaying grant payments estimated at $600 million. After years of bipartisan investment, the Trump administration cut the number of new Alzheimer’s research projects by nearly a third in a single year, according to the report.

Despite Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s crusade to “make Americans healthy again” in overturn the food pyramidthe NIH actively gutted diabetes research by $83 million and heart disease research by $111 million.