Jamie Daw
@jamiedaw.bsky.social

I received one of the 232 NIH grant "terminations" sent to scientists at Columbia last night. My research focuses on improving maternal and child health in the US. Also affected: ongoing clinical trials, research training programs, and research centers that aim to improve the health of Americans.

Ending funding for medical research trials that are already underway is a waste of taxpayer money as well as being cruel and unusual treatment for the participants in those trials and the people who are anxiously and hopefully awaiting their results. Better hope you and your neighbor never find yourselves in the position of needing the results of those trials yourselves.

This FUBAR cutting of medical research is unfortunately not limited to Columbia University but is an essential feature of Musk and his DOGE bros assault on the federal government:

Chaos at the V.A.: Inside the DOGE Cuts Disrupting the Veterans Agency

Clinical trials have been delayed, contracts canceled and support staff fired. With deeper cuts coming, some are warning of potential harms to veterans.

At the Veterans Affairs hospital in Pittsburgh, researchers spent months preparing for a clinical trial of a new drug to treat advanced cancers of the mouth, throat and voice box.

They were ready last month to start enrolling patients--veterans whose cancer had spread to other tissue and who had run out of treatment options.

Then a problem arose.

The hospital was unable to renew the job of a key staff member involved in running the study, a typically routine process thwarted by a hiring freeze imposed under the government-cutting project led by President Trump and Elon Musk. Suddenly, the clinical trial was on hold.

"They were ready to enroll," said Alanna Caffas, the chief executive of the Veterans Health Foundation, which administers the trials. "They had the lab kits on site. They had the drug to dispense. But they couldn't get the clinical research coordinator renewed."

Not renewing funding for medical research trialsis one thing, especially if you give people a heads up so that they can plan and prepare for those cuts. Cutting off funding for trials already underway is another thing entirely. This is true for any of the cuts Musk/Trump are making. People should be given time to plan, prepare, look for other funding sources or wind down programs that can't be sustained. The cruelty is the point though. But they want to traumatize people as Russ Voight said, and in that they are succeeding. And in the process they are also wasting all the time and money that went into the trials/programs that were underway and are suddenly cut off. It didn't have to be this way.