This week, the new administration unilaterally cut funding, specifically for indirect costs, for all NIH (National Institutes of Health) grants. And while a judge has put a temporary halt to this, it is temporary. This should scare you. It scares me. Let me tell you why. Without NIH funding for medical research, I might not be alive. Chances are, a lot of us wouldn’t be even though we might not know it. Vaccines, antibiotics, cancer therapies, cholesterol-lowering drugs, and meds for high blood pressure are just a few of the medical advances that have increased our average life expectancy from 47 years in 1900 to 78 years in 2023. Where does much of the funding come from for these live saving therapies? The NIH.
For me, this reality hits close to home. I was diagnosed in 2021 with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), If not for NIH funded research, the therapeutic advances that saved my life may not have existed. Without critical treatments, my life expectancy would have been around 20% at best. I am now reaching the four-year mark of my diagnosis, and I have a good chance of having a normal life expectancy. Without the lifesaving therapies, I would be looking at maybe one more year of life if I was lucky.
When I was diagnosed with ALL, I tested positive for something called “the Philadelphia Chromosome” – a mutant fusion gene that goes rogue and makes cancer cells grow even more aggressively. The survival rate for leukemia patients who are Ph+ use to be dismal. But when my oncologist told me I had tested positive for it, she said the good news is that effective drugs had been developed to target this gene. Who developed this class of life-saving meds? A researcher name Dr. Brian Druker and his team at Oregon Health and Science University with funding from the NIH.
The other therapeutic advancement that saved my life was the development of stem cell transplants. The history of SCT’s is long and arduous. A doctor named E. Donnell Thomas pioneered this procedure in the United States. Initially, Dr. Thomas transplanted 6 leukemia patients in 1957. Only two patients somewhat engrafted their new stem cells, and all 6 died within 100 days. While many would have given up, Dr. Thomas persisted. He developed a team of researchers at the Fred Hutch Cancer Center in Seattle – a center that gets funding from the NIH. The reason the grafts had failed was that they did not know how to match donors who were compatible with the patients. Over the years, through lots of diligent work, the research team was able to figure out how to better match donors with patients. Soon patients with various types of leukemia were living longer. They were given hope instead of a death sentence. In 1990, Dr. Thomas won a Nobel Prize for his work in stem cell transplantation.
So, when the administration came out with a slash and burn cut on all NIH grants, I took it personally. You may have heard that these cuts are for “indirect costs” – things you can’t directly budget on the grant itself. These are necessities like lab space, electricity to keep the lights on, for heat in the winter and air conditioning in the summer. It’s for highly specialized storage equipment for specimens. It’s for exam rooms for study participants, lab facilities, and research assistants. Some politicians have scoffed at these costs and supported the cuts. Rather than ask the researchers themselves why cutting this funding hurts their research, they merely say, “We’re not paying for your lights”. Rather than talking to the generous people who have participated in and benefited from research projects at the university, they say “We’re tired of you wasting money”. Rather than investigating actual instances of fraud and waste that likely do exist, they just allow someone with no knowledge of medical research to burn the whole place down.
I have related but two out of innumerable examples here of life saving therapies that NIH funding has made possible. Many of you have likely had similar experiences. As you can see, good research takes time, money, and diligent hard-working researchers. Human research needs generous people from the community to participate in studies. Research is a partnership among scientists, academic institutions, federal institutions and the surrounding community. NIH funding and our health should not be politicized. This is not about red or blue. It’s about life and death.
Beth Kitchin PhD RDN