The Damage to Federal Medical Research Is Already Done
Science is, in its very nature, collaborative. Many consortiums and alliances within scientific fields cross borders and language barriers. Some labs may be able to find additional funding from alternative sources such as the European Union. But it is unlikely that a continued withdrawal of NIH funding could be plugged by overseas support. And Big Pharma, with its seemingly endless funds, is unlikely to step up either, according to sources WIRED spoke with.
“This can’t be handed off to drug companies or biotech, because they’re not interested in things that are as preclinical as a lot of the work we’re discussing here,” says a professor of genetics who agreed to speak anonymously out of fear of retribution. “Essentially, there’s a whole legion of university-based scientists who work super damn hard to try to figure out some basic stuff that eventually becomes something that a drug company can drop $100 million on.”
The millions of dollars awarded to high-achieving labs is used to fund graduate students, lab techs, and analysts. If the principal investigator on a research team is unsuccessful in obtaining a grant through the process Keusch describes, often that lab is closed, and those ancillary team members lose their jobs.
One of the potential downstream effects of an NIH funding loss, even if only temporary, is a mass domestic brain drain. “Many of those people are going to go out to find something else to do,” the professor of genetics says. “These are just like jobs for anything else—we can’t not pay people for a month. What would the food service industry be like, for example, or grocery stores, if they don’t pay somebody for a month? Their workers will leave, and pharma can only hire so many people.”
WIRED heard over and over, from scientists too fearful for their teams and their jobs to speak on the record, that it won’t take long for the impact to reach the general population. With a loss of research funding comes the closure of hospitals and universities. And gains in medical advancement will likely falter too.
Conditions being studied with NIH funding are not only rare diseases affecting 1 or 2 percent of the population. They’re problems such as cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s—issues that affect your grandmother, your friends, and so many people who will one day fall out of perfect health. It’s thanks to this research system, and the scientists working within it, that doctors know how to save someone from a heart attack, regulate diabetes, lower cholesterol, and reduce the risk of stroke. It’s how the world knows that smoking isn’t a good idea. “All of that is knowledge that scientists funded by the NIH have generated, and if you throw this big of a wrench in it, it’s going to disrupt absolutely everything,” says the genetics professor.
While some are hopeful that the funding freeze for academia could end on February 1, when the pause on communications and therefore grant reviews is slated to lift, the individuals WIRED spoke with are largely skeptical that work will simply resume as before.
