NIH funding cuts affected more than 74,000 people enrolled in experiments, report says
NEW YORK– More than 74,000 people enrolled in experiments were affected by funding cuts from the National Institutes of Health, according to a new report.
Between late February and mid-August, funding for 383 studies testing treatments for diseases including cancer, heart disease and brain disease was halted. The cuts had a disproportionate impact on efforts to fight infectious diseases like influenza, pneumonia and COVID-19, the researchers found.
Budget cuts have likely disrupted patients’ lives in different ways.
Some may have enrolled in trials that never started or were delayed as institutions scrambled to find alternative funding. Others might have lost access to medications or been left with an unmonitored device implant.
Still others could have participated in trials, but the results would never have been published.
“The disruption to the research sector has been profound and substantial,” said Heather Pierce, who has tracked NIH grant cuts for the Association of American Medical Colleges.
More broadly, lost research harms patients who could have benefited from a possible new treatment, researchers say in the report published Monday in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.
“The sole purpose of these clinical trials is to generate evidence about what works and what doesn’t work in medicine,” said study co-author Anupam B. Jena of Harvard Medical School.
Researchers counted 11,008 NIH-funded studies during the study period. Among them, 1 in 30 lost their funding.
These reductions in clinical trials could also erode trust between people and the medical institutions that support them, said Jeremy Berg, a former director of an NIH institute. Patients might think twice before participating in future research projects, fearing that funding could be cut off abruptly.
“Anyone who has ever been approached about a clinical trial might easily ask, ‘Why should I get involved in this?’ “, Berg said.
The NIH cut billions of dollars in research projects under the Trump administration.
A Supreme Court ruling in August paved the way for the NIH to cut hundreds of millions of dollars in an effort to scale back diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. Challenges to attempts to reduce so-called indirect costs of medical research by the NIH are also being brought before the courts.
Hundreds of NIH scientists signed a letter in June denouncing the new policies and grant cuts, saying they “undermine the mission of the NIH, waste public resources, and harm the health of Americans and people around the world.”
Emily G. Hilliard, press secretary for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, declined to comment.
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