Demonstrators protest funding cuts outside of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Md., on March 8.MICHAEL MATHES/AFP/Getty Images
Molly Knight Raskin is a freelance journalist based outside New York City.
When Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump, was chided by a journalist on X for cutting funding for cancer research, the tech oligarch indignantly clapped back: “I’m not. Wtf are you talking about?”
Despite Mr. Musk’s denial, the journalist in question – Molly Jong-Fast of Vanity Fair – knew exactly what she was talking about. As part of Donald Trump’s dismantling of the federal government, Mr. Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have upended the National Institutes of Health, the world’s largest funder of biomedical research. In addition to purging data from the NIH website, terminating more than a thousand of its employees, and blocking new grant applications, they’ve stalled or cut funding for research into a wide range of diseases, including cancer.
The NIH has long enjoyed bipartisan support and a growing budget, but Mr. Trump’s second term has placed the agency directly in the crosshairs of a cost-cutting spree. The deepest cuts stem from a new policy to drastically reduce the amount of research money granted to universities and hospitals by the NIH, which funds around 300,000 researchers at more than 2,500 institutions annually in the U.S. and globally, including Canada. In 2024, the NIH granted more than US$40-million to Canadian researchers.
Under the new federal policy, these institutions will face a massive cut to the amount they’re reimbursed for overhead expenses, which include equipment, utilities and support staff. By slashing the rate from the national average of 30 per cent to just 15 per cent, the administration will leave these institutions scrambling to cover huge shortfalls.
A federal judge has blocked the cuts with a series of temporary restraining orders. But scientists – including the more than two-dozen anguished and anxious scientists who spoke to me – are still sounding the alarm. As Dr. Rick Huganir, professor and chair of the Department of Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, told me: “If these things stand, it would mean the end of science as we know it.”
This is not the first time Mr. Trump tried to cut NIH funding. A bipartisan group of Congressional lawmakers rejected his efforts in his first term, instead passing a bill increasing its funds by US$2-billion. This time, however, Republican legislators have remained unnervingly silent. A few have even parroted the administration’s claim that it would funnel the savings into more scientific research; even if this comes to pass, this “break it first, fix it later” approach would still blow up arguably the world’s most efficient and innovative research infrastructure.
Over the past 25 years, NIH research has led to an enviable list of breakthroughs, including mRNA vaccines, immunotherapies to treat cancer, and a blood test for Alzheimer’s. The NIH supported the development of all but two of the 356 drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration between 2010 and 2019. Advancement is happening at a breakneck speed; any pause in the work amounts to a self-inflicted wound. Dr. Larry Corey, an internationally renowned virologist and the former director of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, told me that the administration is “just throwing a bomb on what is universally acknowledged as the best in biomedical research in the world.”
So what can be done?
As part of a multipronged approach, American scientists have started to ask citizens to call for their representatives to oppose the cuts to research, especially in deep-red states such as Alabama, Kentucky and Iowa. In these states, the cuts would have a deleterious impact not only on biomedical research, but on local economies.
Scientists are also pushing to boost scientific education. This is especially important as evidence-based science is being undermined by influential voices, including Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk, who, in their gleeful gutting, are deterring aspiring young scientists from contributing to vital government work. High-quality education is also critical in combatting misinformation, which exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic. While it’s true that understanding the nuances of issues like vaccine efficacy can be time-consuming, there are plenty of trusted, independent sources to turn to, including ScienceNews and PubMed.
Finally, and most urgently, most of the scientists I interviewed echoed one simple message: Many of them are leading the work to develop new treatments, even cures, for life-threatening diseases, which would save the lives of many people in America – not to mention the world. Dr. Mats Ljungman, who is the co-director of the Center for RNA Biomedicine at the University of Michigan and is developing an innovative cancer therapy that uses genetic information to create a treatment that selectively attacks tumours, said if the NIH shrinks or stalls his funding, or funding for thousands of other researchers, “a cure that could be one or two years away could then be 10 years away, or longer.”
Dr. Huganir, who led a team of researchers in the 1990s that discovered a gene responsible for intellectual disability, has since used funding from the NIH to develop therapies that have the potential to cure children with the gene if they’re treated early in life. This treatment could reach clinical trials in two or three years, but only if his research continues unimpeded. “We’re in a race against time,” he said.
As the Trump administration’s siege on science continues, it’s worth remembering that the vast majority of scientists are not millionaires; most of them spend their careers working tirelessly on tight budgets and shoestring salaries. They do so because they hope to discover something that improves or saves lives. All they ask for in return is respect for their mission and support for their work. And the fact is that any one of us – regardless of our politics, race, gender, religion, or economic status – could be one of the millions of people sickened every year with a life-threatening illness. If this happens, would you want the researchers working on a cure to be worried about how they’ll keep the lights on in their lab?
Donald Trump appears not to care. Americans need to speak up if they hope to change his mind.