A life sciences coalition chaired by Wisconsin Institute for Discovery Director Jo Handelsman is rallying against “unprecedented disruptions” caused by cuts to federal science funding.
Handelsman spoke yesterday during a Wisconsin Technology Council meeting in Madison, where she said the Trump administration’s moves to withhold and cancel funding for health research and other areas are already doing damage.
“The uncertainty is devastating,” she said. “The effect on morale is horrible. I think I spend more of my time just trying to keep people’s spirits up, the young people in particular, than just about anything else because people are just so demoralized.”
She noted cuts to National Institutes of Health funding aimed at diversity, equity and inclusion or DEI have been indiscriminate, in some cases targeting unrelated research that happens to have the word “diversity” in the topic. In other cases, funding has been cut for efforts to understand health differences between various populations, which Handelsman called a “critical” area of research.
Handelsman, a former White House science advisor in the Obama administration, says the cuts have been “appalling.” She argued the abrupt end to federal support for ongoing projects leads to waste as funding has already been invested and work is underway.
“It’s massively destructive to student training, because all of a sudden the student or postdoc is left without support,” she said. “And then it’s also particularly problematic for clinical trials because patients are left without the care that comes along with many clinical trials … that can be very dangerous and even fatal.”
The Coalition for the Life Sciences, which Handelsman began chairing just this month, recently sent a letter to the leaders of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the National Institutes of Health expressing these and other concerns.
The group argues ending NIH grants for biomedical research is creating “tremendous” government waste while jeopardizing the U.S. scientific workforce and making the country less competitive with China and other nations that are prioritizing investments in science and technology.
Along with disrupting the U.S. research apparatus, Handelsman says the administration’s costcutting efforts will hurt Wisconsin’s economy, particularly the state’s biotech industry anchored in Madison. She explained UW-Madison and other universities across the country are urging their scientists to stop ordering supplies needed for biotech research.
“We get reimbursed from NIH after we spend the money, which is a real problem if they cut the money off instantaneously, then the invoices that were going to go to NIH never get paid,” she said, adding “what is that doing to Promega and many other of our suppliers of biotechnology in town?”
She’s calling on the business community to speak up about the impact of these research funding cuts, noting the new restrictions will slow down new ideas and discoveries that feed industry.
“Even if everything is reversed right now, we’ve had a four-month hiatus on many, many projects, not to mention all the time that everyone’s spending trying to figure out what’s going to happen next,” she said. “And I don’t think it’s going to be reversed tomorrow.”
