A federal judge is set to hear arguments Friday on the Trump administration’s attempt to slash federal grants for health research.
Some Massachusetts researchers say the cuts would devastate scientific discovery.
Josh Rosenthal studies octopus and squid at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. He looks at how their genetic processes can help develop drugs for human problems, like lung disease and chronic pain. His research led to a new biotech company that just started human trials.
Rosenthal says that kind of science will be devastated if the National Institutes of Health (NIH) severely caps what are called indirect costs.
“I think there's a fundamental misconception out there of what indirect costs are used for,” he said.
While the Trump administration has said it’s rooting out waste, Rosenthal says indirect costs include basic needs, from electricity to the internet.
“You can't do lab research without lights and a lab bench,” he said. “You need you need the facility support to enable you to do the research.”
Rosenthal says scientists generally use between 40 and 70 percent of a grant for overhead costs, but the Trump administration wants to cap it at 15 percent. Rosenthal calls that “draconian.”
“And it'll make us rethink the way we have to do research in a very...negative way. We'll have to reduce greatly reduce the research that's that we can accomplish,” Rosenthal said.
“Hopefully I'll still be doing some sort of research, but not at the not at the cutting edge where I'd like to be,” he added. “Not even anywhere close.”
Rosenthal said philanthropic or private investments could not make up the difference in federal funding.
And he said the effects would trickle down beyond non-profit institutions like his – to entire communities. Woods Hole, for instance, is known as a mecca for biological research, and most of its facilities would suffer from the proposed NIH cuts.
