We are living through an era of accelerated medical progress: in just a few decades, childhood leukemia survival has jumped from 10% to over 90%. Yet, more work remains: cancer remains the second cause of death here in Westchester County.
Today’s cures are the return on a long-term investment in biomedical research. The main driver of this effort is the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which awards grants to research institutions and hospitals around the country. Over 99% of new drug approvals are backed by NIH-funded research. In Westchester County alone, close to 200 NIH-funded clinical trials are currently taking place, treating a wide range of cancers and other conditions.
Since the new federal administration took office a month ago, it has placed the NIH under attack. In the name of cost-saving, 10% of NIH scientists have been abruptly terminated, without regard for NIH’s mission or future. Over $1.5 billion in grants to research institutions are currently frozen, despite court orders to restore funding. This is a crisis that threatens the medical progress we have taken for granted.
Typical research labs like the one I lead are essentially startups. We submit projects to the NIH which selects only the best ones: usually around one in ten proposals gets funded. Each NIH grant lasts from two to five years and most of the funds go toward the salaries of a small research team. This means that NIH provides good-paying jobs in our community and stimulates our local economy – our congressional district, NY-17, receives over $30 million. Any funding lapse forces us to let go of talent, and if prolonged, to close down the lab. The current freeze in NIH grants has no end in sight. Unless it is put to an end immediately, jobs will be lost and the labs which grants are expiring will shut down permanently without a chance to extend promising research. Entire research programs will be lost and we will miss the next generation of life-saving cures.
In addition to the current grant freeze, the administration is trying to abruptly cut the rate of “indirect costs” for future NIH grants. Indirects costs are funds provided by the NIH to cover costs that are essential for research but not associated with a specific project: utilities and building maintenance, regulatory oversight that ensures responsible research, safe waste disposal, and so on. If you ran a hospital, you wouldn’t cut costs by suddenly refusing to pay for the operating rooms where surgeons perform life-saving procedures. Rather than reducing waste, cutting indirect costs out of the blue will just chaotically downsize research institutions around the country.
Surely there must be wasteful research that can be cut to save taxpayer money? For instance, why fund studies of tree bark, sea squirts, or Easter Island dirt? Careful what you wish for: even though they sound silly, each of these topics has eventually led to the discovery of a new cancer treatment (Taxol, Trabectedin, and Everolimus). Since each NIH dollar typically triggers $2.5 in economic activity, shrinking the NIH budget would not save money overall. Rather, we would miss on a sound investment which costs each of us less than a standard Netflix subscription.
Much of the proposed cuts to NIH are still being litigated. I hope you will join me in reaching out to our elected representatives to urge them to end the NIH freeze and maintain our vital biomedical research (https://5calls.org/ can help you find their contact information).
Timothée Lionnet lives in Montrose and is an associate professor of Cell Biology at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. The views and opinions in this column are his own and not intended to represent those of NYU Grossman School of Medicine or River Towns Media LLC.
