On Friday, February 7, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that it would allow only 15% of “indirect costs” associated with the wide range of scientific research projects it funds at universities, medical facilities, and other science institutions. The change in funding, originally set to begin on Monday, February 10, would have created chaos at these institutions, but Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell worked with twenty-one other Attorneys General to file a lawsuit blocking the change to the NIH funding formula. Their case will be heard in U.S. District Court on Friday, February 21, and the change is on hold until then. The outcome of this lawsuit affects NIH research projects only in the claimant states.
Rep. Jake Auchincloss told Fig City News that the NIH indirect cost cuts would do irreparable harm to Massachusetts research institutions. Some major research institutions require as much as 60% of their funding for indirect costs, he explained. Much depends on the type of research and the type of facilities. Indirect costs may include laboratories, electricity, and maintenance assistants. Biotech companies and hospitals are planned and built for research, he said, but public universities may require construction funded by indirect costs. All of the direct and indirect costs are determined before the funds are distributed. To the argument that many of these institutions have generous endowments, the Congressman noted that often donors stipulate that their money can be used only for direct research.
NIH distributed nearly $4 billion to 219 Massachusetts research organizations for 5,783 projects representing over 9% of NIH annual funding for the state and funding 35,000 Massachusetts jobs. The Congressman’s staff confirmed that constituents have been calling his office to expressing concerns about the impact on their research.
Both Rep. Auchincloss and Attorney General Campbell emphasized that the scientific work funded by NIH will provide help for the increasing aged population at risk for Alzheimers, as well as the expanding treatment options for people with cancer. The research projects are sited in laboratories all over the Commonwealth.
In a speech on the House floor, Rep. Auchincloss noted that NIH funding is widely dispersed throughout the United States, and he challenged his Republican colleagues to go to those research institutions in their own states and tell scientists that they supported the cuts in NIH indirect cost. On the other hand, he hopes to build bipartisan support to restore NIH funding precisely because it is the source of the country’s major medical research. The ultimate beneficiary of NIH’s radical research curtailment would be China, Rep Auchincloss told his House colleagues, underscoring that country’s significant recent gains in biomedical research.
In the Attorneys General lawsuit and in Rep. Auchincloss’s speech on the House floor, they made the case that the Trump Administration’s reduction of indirect costs violates the 2017 Administrative Procedures Act, passed when Donald Trump tried to limit indirect costs in his first presidential term. The Representative said that Congress has been voting for the continuity of scientific reimbursements every year since that time.
For newly elected Newton State Representative Greg Schwartz, the NIH upheaval collides with his years as a practicing physician at Mass General Brigham. “People I worked alongside are NIH recipients,” he told Fig City News. “The cutbacks can’t support research,””he said, adding, “It’s so easy to tear things down, but so hard to build them up.” He fears the loss of human capital, of people committed to research or planning to make careers of scientific research.
In an interview with Fig City News, Dr. Ashish Jha, Dean of the Brown University School of Public Health and former Biden White House Covid-19 Response Coordinator, predicted that the NIH cuts will have a devastating impact on public universities. Unlike long-standing research in science-based institutions – including Harvard Medical School, Tufts University, MIT, the Broad Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, The University of the Holy Cross, and Boston University – many state universities have used grants to build as well as maintain research laboratories. These institutions will not be able to continue to afford their scientific projects, and therefore will be forced to abandon their research, according to Dr. Jha.
Dr. Jha, a Newton resident, and others have suggested that there is always room for “a broader conversation about funding,” but he believes that the “DOGE,” Elon Musk’s self-designated Department of Government Efficiency,” will have a decidedly negative long-term impact on American scientific research, and ultimately, Americans will suffer. Echoing Rep. Auchincloss’s warning, Dr. Jha said that China will be the beneficiary, noting that it has spent large amounts of money to recruit scientists from other countries for their projects. “From a policy point of view, this is really bad for American medicine,” he said.
