Right now, hundreds of experiments are either paused or terminated. Valuable mouse lines are also in
jeopardy because researchers can’t go to work to perform essential maintenance. Clinical trials activity (most visibly cancer trials designed to test new treatments and produce new breakthroughs) has slowed to a crawl although – for the moment at least – there’s limited enrollment in existing trials.
Less visible, but equally important, are the effects on investigators in the NIH extramural program. This is research that is funded through the NIH, but it happens across the country at universities and major medical centers in your community. New grants can’t be evaluated because peer review is on hold, and even new grants that have been awarded can’t be released, because NIH staff isn’t there to process them.
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Perhaps just as troubling are the signals that are being sent to young researchers who we hope will develop the next generation of treatments and cures. The choice of becoming a scientist has always been fraught with a high level of risk. Fewer than 43% of life scientists we train will go on to
work as academic researchers, with a much smaller percentage obtaining a tenure track position. Even if they are successful in competing for these jobs, the
falling success rates of federally-sponsored research means that the average age of obtaining their first NIH grant will continue to creep into the 40s, when those new scientists won’t be so new anymore. The failure to support the American research enterprise doesn’t only fail science within the current budget cycle – it fails the future by depriving America of the talent we need to invent and innovate, which in turn harms economic growth.
