Cutting NIH funding isn’t how to defeat disease, it’s surrender

Among the many things that make America exceptional is our proud legacy of scientific research and discovery. Thanks to research funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), 90% of the children diagnosed this year with the most common form of leukemia will go on to be cured. Babies born with cystic fibrosis — once an early death sentence — can now expect to live long and full lives. A patient diagnosed with cancer in America today is 34% less likely to die from it than they were just 30 years ago. NIH-funded research leads to better treatments for heart disease, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, diabetes and more. And it enables our country to keep setting the standard — driving medical innovation and progress and giving hope to countless patients.  

The proposed NIH funding cuts, totaling at least $4 billion per year, threaten that leadership. As the heads of two major research medical centers and as physician researchers ourselves, we are deeply concerned about the immediate, devastating impacts these cuts will have on patients and their families and their potentially irreversible long-term effects on our nation’s ability to achieve the next great medical breakthrough. 

Since the end of World War II, medical and scientific research in the United States has mainly been carried out in public and private universities through a system of competitively awarded grants funded by the federal government.  

BIDEN-NOMINATED FEDERAL JUDGE EXTENDS HOLD ON TRUMP NIH RESEARCH FUNDING CUTS

There are two major reasons why this partnership has worked so well and made our system the envy of the world. One, it enables American research universities and hospitals to attract the most-skilled physicians and scientists and the most-talented students — the winning combination for scientific breakthroughs.  

Two, it is tremendously efficient: by conducting research in non-government facilities, the government pays only part of the operating costs of the research it funds — it doesn’t have to build and maintain its own facilities or hire and manage its own staff. 

Only the best research proposals — about one in five — are accepted for funding. When the government agrees to fund a research project, it also agrees to share in the expenses necessary to facilitate that project — like electricity, heating and cooling, and the costs of complying with increasingly burdensome federal regulations.  

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How much of those costs the government will cover is agreed on through careful negotiation and then audited regularly to ensure that universities aren’t overcharging the government or redirecting the funds. It’s a thorough and effective process. 

These new funding cuts would pull billions of dollars in support that the federal government has already committed for biomedical research that is already underway. That’s the money that keeps the lights on and the equipment running and helps support the specialized technology — like supercomputers, MRIs and electron microscopes — that helps us find new cures. 

An interruption of these funds would mean clinical trials halted, experiments stopped, labs closed and staff lost. It would directly affect the lives of patients currently enrolled in clinical trials of new therapies for hypertension and heart disease, Alzheimer’s and cancer — setting progress back by years in some cases. For many of these clinical trials, it would mean sending patients home with no other options and no remaining hope. 

Our institutions are committed to upholding the trust our communities, our patients and American taxpayers place in us. We are also ready and willing to work with this administration to make the partnership between government and research institutions — a partnership that has brought so much life, health and success to our country — stronger and more efficient. Let’s start, not by interrupting critical research and patient care, but by tackling the onerous regulations and excessive bureaucracy that slow research progress and discovery. 

Rather than abruptly disrupting a system that benefits so many, we should seek areas of common ground and continue the collaboration that has saved so many lives. These proposed cuts will set America back, not move us forward. 

Robert A. Harrington, MD, is dean of Weill Cornell Medicine and provost for Medical Affairs, Cornell University.