Research on Hold: How Federal Funding Cuts Are Stalling Medical Breakthroughs and Impacting American Health
Anne Morgan Giroux holds onto a potent hope: that a potential cure, or at least a significant long-term solution, for epilepsy is within reach, housed in a Wisconsin university lab. The team of researchers she supports needs only $3.3 million to finalize the development and begin human trials. However, this promising avenue is currently stalled due to federal spending cuts initiated by the Trump administration. The necessary funding was intended to come from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the form of research grants.
Epilepsy, a neurological disorder, affects approximately 1% of the adult population in the United States, translating to about 3 million individuals. Giroux’s frustration is palpable: "When you have a kid with epilepsy and you see that this kind of Holy Grail, this potential treatment is sitting there within grasp but yet now unattainable, it’s frustrating," she said. Her own daughter was born with epilepsy, leading Giroux and her community to raise over $1 million to fund the preliminary research that led scientists to this promising treatment path. "We’re so close to a finish line, and to have the research just sitting there is unbearable.”
This predicament is not isolated. Across the nation, university scientists are facing similar funding losses under the administration’s altered priorities. Researchers, patients, families, and entrepreneurs warn that these cuts will ultimately lead to a sicker and poorer nation as healthcare costs escalate due to the lack of new treatments for a wide range of diseases, including obesity, diabetes, cancer, autism, and the myriad challenges associated with aging.
The NIH, as the world’s largest funder of medical research, is a critical source of support, accounting for approximately 1% of the entire federal budget. Avtar Roopra, the University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher leading the epilepsy treatment development, underscores the importance of early-stage funding. He explains that many breakthroughs originate from experimental work funded by private individuals and organizations like Giroux, which then provides the necessary evidence to secure NIH grants. "With these cuts, that pipeline is going to be severed at the university level," Roopra said. "Companies are not going to take on the risk of decades-long research without a financial return."
Roopra is concerned that even a short delay in funding could trigger a cascade of negative consequences, potentially forcing his research assistants and lab manager to seek employment elsewhere. The loss of their expertise and experience would set the lab back significantly. A federal judge did temporarily block the administration from cutting NIH funding, but the researchers say the money has not yet begun flowing again. “Even if we get a whole new crop of people next year, we will have lost decades of generational knowledge,” Roopra said.
The situation is further complicated by the fact that while some existing research funding administered by universities has been halted, Congress is also considering long-term cuts to NIH grants. These grants typically provide about $48 billion annually to support research at 2,500 universities, medical schools, and other research institutions.
The impact of these cuts extends beyond epilepsy research. Dr. William Hsu, a Harvard Medical School professor, pointed to the halt of the Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP), a long-running initiative that demonstrated the significant impact of diet and exercise in preventing diabetes. In recent years, the DPP was administered by Columbia University, which has faced substantial research cuts amounting to $400 million from the administration. Despite costing approximately $80 million annually, the DPP was estimated to save about $20 billion each year in diabetes-related healthcare costs, according to congressional budget writers.
The American Diabetes Association estimates that diabetes accounts for 25% of all healthcare spending in the United States annually. Hsu worries that the loss of prevention programs will lead to increased reliance on prescription drugs rather than proactive lifestyle changes. "Prevention is one of those areas where we should do more, not less," said Hsu, who is now the chief medical officer of L-Nutra Health, a lifestyle-medicine company.
Many researchers fear that the administration’s cuts are based on the mistaken assumption that private companies or venture capitalists will fill the void. However, private industry typically only invests in research that is close to producing a viable product. "Pharma, industry, Tesla, they don’t do this," said University of California San Diego Prof. Jonathan Sebat, an expert in the genetics of mental health. "They rely on the basic science funded by the NIH."
Sebat believes that research cuts will deprive Americans of treatments and cures that require decades of development. He cited GLP-1 diabetes and weight-loss drugs like Ozempic as examples, highlighting their origins in NIH-funded studies on how yeasts consume sugar on grapes. Sebat’s own lab studies the genetic causes of autism spectrum disorders and schizophrenia. "There’s no such thing as short term in this business," said Sebat. "If you stop (research) or even cut it, you’re having long-term effects on our health care, on every aspect of our health care pipeline."
Critics of the NIH, primarily from conservative circles, accuse the agency of having overly close ties to pharmaceutical companies and of creating a funding system where government scientists determine research priorities. Other criticisms center on accusations of "wokeness" and perceived failures to adequately study the potential negative impacts of abortion and gender-affirming care.
Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for restructuring the federal government, proposes dramatic changes to the NIH, including shifting research funding decisions to the states. The authors claim this would enhance transparency and accountability. The project statement says, "Despite its popular image as a benign science agency, NIH was responsible for paying for research in aborted baby body parts, human-animal chimera experiments, and gain-of-function viral research that may have been responsible for COVID-19.”
Vik Bajaj, a venture capitalist and CEO of an AI-driven medicine development lab in California, acknowledges the potential for the administration’s cuts to improve research focus and reduce bureaucratic inefficiencies. However, he is concerned about the impact on "blue sky" research, which refers to research without immediate real-world applications but that often leads to significant advancements. He points to the internet and cell phones as examples of innovations that originated from such research.
Bajaj highlights China’s adoption of the American model of investing heavily in a broad range of research projects, with the expectation that these investments will ultimately yield benefits and contribute to human knowledge. "Everything we care about, the complex systems upon which our lives depend … all have their genesis in academic research," said Bajaj, the CEO of Foresite Labs, and managing director at Foresite Capital, an investment firm focused on biotech and big data.
Sebat, Roopra, and Giroux emphasize that they understand the need for responsible spending of federal research dollars and welcome appropriate oversight. However, they believe that wholesale cuts are not the answer. "If you’re upset about people speeding down the interstate, you don’t simply close the highway," said Giroux, arguing that halting NIH funding is a misguided approach.
