Every year, the National Institutes of Health awards billions from dollars to the University of California to pay for the research of Krebs, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, heart disease, diabetes and other diseases that have been at the forefront of their studies for decades.
A drastic reduction in NIH financing as part of the Trump government, which is scheduled to take place on Monday, caused the UC leaders and many medical researchers alarm, which said that the step would “endanger America's research preparations”.
In conversation with the time since the cuts were announced on Friday evening, the UC medical researchers expressed concerns about the future of their laboratories and life -saving efforts – Like others at universities and academic medical centers across the country.
On Friday, the NIH said that it received more than half the so-called “indirect financing” municipal costs for research stocks, building maintenance, supply companies, support employees and other costs that institutions in the context of medical research grants.
From Monday, the indirect financing sponsored by the NIH will be limited to 15% of the grants, 57% that many UCLA research projects receive, and the 64% at UC San Francisco, which has the highest rate in the UC system.
In his X Post On Friday on Friday, the NIH shared a graphic that compared the indirect financing rates for Harvard, Yale and Johns Hopkins with their multibillion dollars. The highest among them, Harvard, was 69%.
The move of the NIH would save around 4 billion US dollars a year in tax money, according to the post office. The agency said that more than a quarter of its research financing of 35 billion US dollars went to Overhead last year. As a comparisonIt quoted private foundations, including the Chan Zuckerberg initiative and the Gates Foundation, and explained that their overhead costs were 15% or lower.
“The United States should have the best medical research in the world,” said the NIH in Instructions published on his website. “It is therefore important to ensure that as many funds as possible for direct scientific research costs and not for the administrative effort.”
University researchers said that, although it was referred to as “indirect financing”, the money is of essential importance and pays off in order to maintain life -saving science – from the proper storage of biological samples to the storage of living animals for medical studies . They also claim that private foundations do not have to follow the same rules for the categorization of expenses, and say that this is unfair to compare overhead costs Between the two.
The Republicans argue that the costs are superfluous, part of the inflated expenses for tax money, which President Trump has appointed Elon Musk to be pare.
Scientists point out that the universities have already paid a higher proportion of research costs. Data from the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics Show that the Federal Slice of Research support has dropped by 12% since 1980, while the university's payments have risen by 11%.
Cuts could “endanger” UC medical research
The NIH is the largest sponsor of UC research and in the last academic year offers 2.6 billion US dollars -62% of the university's federal awards of more than 4.2 billion dollars.
In a statement, UC said that the “new management of the administration would endanger this important support and endanger American research preparation”.
“These time -honored university partnerships have led to some of the most powerful and effective research results in human history,” the explanation said. “Life -saving treatments for cancer, diabetes, heart attacks and strokes, including children as well as new technologies and industries that lead to hundreds of thousands of well -paid jobs, are all at risk. America is the first in research, but its dominance is not certain. “
On Saturday, UC officials still analyzed the effects of the NIH parade and were in contact with UC lawyers, researchers and administrators to react.
In an e -mail to his science faculty after the NIH announcement, a UCLA dean said: “As with many announcements in the past few weeks, this undoubtedly has been afraid. Please know that the leadership on the UCLA and the UC works to understand the effects. “
The white house defends the move
The White House defended its action and said on Saturday in an e -mail explosion to the media: “The NIH has not announced reductions for actual research.” It quoted Vinay Prasad, professor of epidemiology and biostatistics and medicine at UC San Francisco, the praised the Nih step in his blog.
The cut could even mean more science. Less money for the administration is more money to spend the actual scientists, ”wrote Prasad. “I am shocked to see how researchers cry about how much money the university gets – it means that more grants can be preserved per cycle.”
Several other UC researchers, many who had applied for an extension after a recent application break or were in the middle of the assembled subsidy proposals, said they were stunned.
“All of my research is closed when this is going through. There is no other way to say it. It will happen, ”said Beate Ritz, professor and deputy chairman of the Department of Epidemiology at UCLA, who has received at least 1 million US dollars a year for more than a decade to research pollution, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. “It is not my salary. I am paid the state to teach. But it is the cost of many different ones. “
What is cut
Indirect costs cover items outside of salaries, travel, supplies and other direct expenses. The indirect costs are negotiated between the university and the federal government – usually every three or four years for UC campus – which is why the change surprised the scientists.
Gina Poe, a neurobiological professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine from UCLA, said she feared that her decades of research into memory, sleep and post -traumatic stress syndrome were threatened.
Poe explained how her scholarship works. It receives 250,000 US dollars a year from the NIH to pay five bachelor and graduated research assistants, including rats and mice. This does not include your indirect financing.
With the indirect cost rate of the UCLA of 57%, Poe seem to get an additional $ 142,500 at first glance at first glance. But she said mathematics was more complicated and it gets much less.
The Federal Government, said Poe, withdraw certain costs from the grant before calculating the indirect level of financing. The most important equipment costs, tuition fees for students and more are not included. Ultimately, its indirect financing of NIH is an additional 114,000 US dollars, which mainly go to the UCLA and the university's life sciences in order to cover the costs and other expenses of the university.
Under the budget items, indirect funds for: workers who take care of rats and mice, they feed them and clean their cages. It also pays off for visits to medical and vet.
According to the new NIH formula, the indirect financing allowance from POE would be minimal.
“The only way to compensate for this money is to move my work to a private company so that the UCLA increase the tuition fees in order to cover additional costs or to apply for private foundations in which the competition considerably for the financing will increase, “said.
Vivek Shetty, a UCLA professor for oral and maxillofacial surgery and biomedical engineering and former chairman of the Academic Senate, expressed concerns that the US research power could be reduced.
“America's global leadership in science and technology was not only built on the genius. It was strongly based on infrastructure and systems that enabled universities to transform ideas into innovations. Cripples that the infrastructure and the next medical or AI progress take place elsewhere – not only take jobs and prestige, but also the economic vitality and social progress that innovation brings with it, ”said Shetty.
The change in financing has hit a certain nerve at universities since Trump's inauguration. Many administrators felt under the microscope of a president who has shown himself against what he describes as “Marxist” universities that are overrun by left.
In the past month, UC officers expressed concerns after a temporary NIH break to check the research grants. Trump's executive orders also have variety, equity and inclusion programs – including the federal grants and programs. On Wednesday, he signed an executive order with which transgender athletes are supposed to take part in participating in women's or girls sports events.