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Zeynep Tufekci
Feb. 11, 2025
Credit… Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle, via Getty Images In a month of one bombshell after another (and many all at the same time), it can be hard to track the damage that the Trump administration is inflicting. But unlike attacks on predictable issues like D.E.I. and foreign aid, the announcement on Friday that the National Institutes of Health would slash funding for medical research doesn’t make even cynical political sense. It’s a decision that would endanger Americans’ health, go against decades of bipartisan support and could torch one of the nation’s most astounding, productive and envied industries. On Monday, a Federal District Court judge temporarily blocked the cuts for the 22 states that have sued to halt them, but don’t count on the administration to just drop the matter.
The N.I.H.’s announcement was made, of course, in the language of “efficiency.” “Can you believe that universities with tens of billions in endowments were siphoning off 60 percent of research award money for ‘overhead’?” Elon Musk wrote. “What a rip-off!” The actual percentage is less than half that, but sure, put it all in the wood chipper.
The problem with doing that is that these grants are a crucial reason that America has the most advanced biomedical research infrastructure — the N.I.H. awards grants to more than 300,000 researchers at more than 2,500 institutions, including the Mayo Clinic and the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas — along with some of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world. Every dollar in N.I.H. grants spurs $2.09 in economic activity, and every $100 million in investment leads to 78 patents and $598 million in further research, according to N.I.H. calculations. Those “overheads” help cover basic infrastructure that make all this possible.
The grants have been the source of new treatments for cancer, heart disease, diabetes, strokes and H.I.V.; wonder drugs like Ozempic; groundbreaking techniques like I.V.F. and laparoscopies. Cutting them will significantly narrow the pipeline to future cures and drugs.
Some of the biggest victims will be public institutions, especially those in red states. No wonder that, even in this era of Donald Trump’s total dominance of the Republican Party, the junior senator from Alabama, Katie Britt, quickly called for “a smart, targeted approach” that would not “hinder lifesaving, groundbreaking research at high-achieving institutions.”
Her motivation? Maybe it’s because the University of Alabama, Birmingham, one of the largest employers in her state, received more than $1 billion in recent years from the N.I.H., with an impressive record of results. In fiscal year 2023 alone, N.I.H. grants totaled $1.85 billion across dozens of institutions in Texas, and $914 million in Florida. Tennessee received $770 million and so on. Britt is one of a long line of Republicans who have championed federal research dollars for universities and the N.I.H.’s work with higher education. In 2015, Newt Gingrich argued for doubling the N.I.H. budget because, on top of all the other benefits, good health saves money. In contrast, the severe cuts announced Friday would follow the playbook advocated by Project 2025, which maintained that such payments “cross-subsidize leftist agendas.”
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