UC researchers, patients wary of Trump cuts even as some dollars flow again

This article first appeared on KFF Wellbeing News Subscribe to KFF Soundness News free Morning Briefing In August an -year-old woman walked into the emergency room at Ronald Reagan UCLA Healthcare Center She was lucid but experiencing a stroke Within minutes doctors questioned for permission to pull out the stroke-causing clot before any more brain damage could occur She hesitated The procedure was part of a clinical trial and she d heard about a federal freeze on research grants to UCLA She wished to know Would this analysis be at danger potentially affecting her care Those worries put unnecessary pressure on a person facing the loss of roughly million nerve cells every minute that rehabilitation was delayed explained Jeffrey Saver a neurologist and longtime stroke researcher To then have to worry about what s happening with the funding from the federal governing body is a needless increase in the stress patients are going through Saver mentioned Patients and researchers such as Saver have exposed themselves caught in the middle as the Trump administration has accused major universities of antisemitism and bias pulling research funds in an attempt to extract concessions Scientists who have spent their lives advancing treatments for lung cancer brain tumors and Alzheimer s sickness say scientific funding should not be politicized and warn that patients waiting for lifesaving treatments stand to lose the majority of They also worry that funding cuts mired in legal challenges could discourage would-be scientists from entering the field reducing the chances for healthcare breakthroughs I would have thought that stroke and Alzheimer s condition and all these conditions affect Democrats and Republicans alike and would be supported by everyone Saver stated The reasons for the suspension don t seem to tie into the work we re doing In July the National Institutes of Physical condition the National Science Foundation and the Ability Department froze million in health and science research grants to UCLA after the Justice Department noted the university had violated the civil rights of Jewish students during pro-Palestinian protests The Trump administration proposed a settlement that would require UCLA to pay a billion fine and overhaul campus policies on admissions hiring and gender-affirming wellbeing care to reinstate the grants Yet the federal establishment plays a crucial role in funding lifesaving research that industry has little incentive to back Saver disclosed medication discoveries made in the past years have been transformative for stroke care To keep eight clinical trials afloat Saver announced he and other neurology department faculty members sought outside funding and agreed to salary cuts But they were close to running out before federal funds were restored In the ER doctors stated the stroke individual not to worry Given the need to review her particular signs they tapped a pot of private donations to cover the procedure She enrolled and was treated Gov Gavin Newsom a Democrat who has been challenging President Donald Trump more directly as he builds a national profile has likened the president s demands to extortion And Newsom this month threatened to instantly take away state funding from any California university that signs a compact Trump put forth that prioritizes federal research funds to institutions that adhere to the administration s definitions of gender limit international students and change admissions policies among other stipulations California will not bankroll schools that sell out their students professors researchers and surrender academic freedom Newsom reported in a comment In September U S District Judge Rita Lin of the Northern District of California ordered frozen NIH grants in the state to flow again folding UCLA researchers into a lawsuit initially brought by researchers from UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco in June after federal agencies slashed hundreds of millions in grants to UC campuses Specific private academic institutions have reclaimed their funding by agreeing to pay hefty fines and changing campus policies including Columbia University which agreed to pay million and Brown University which settled for million Meanwhile last month a federal judge ruled that the administration s cancellation of chosen billion in grants to Harvard was illegal Still researchers worry the relief is temporary Even with the district court s restoration the situation brought by UC researchers is still pending and could ultimately be decided in Trump s favor The White House has vowed to appeal the ruling to restore Harvard s funding while heightening scrutiny of the school s finances We haven t seen everything play out yet Lots of scientists and researchers and people who run labs are circumspect knowing that the near future could be a bit bumpy disclosed Jessica Levinson a constitutional law professor at Loyola Law School They should feel like this is a win but it s accomplishable that it s a short-lived one Leaders at the U S Department of Vitality and Human Services did not respond to questions about possible harm done to studies while the funds were frozen or criticisms that they are wrongly politicizing money for potentially lifesaving research In a report about the administration s campaign targeting antisemitism HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon reported that we will not fund institutions that promote antisemitism We will use every tool we have to ensure institutions follow the law HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard declared in a follow-up declaration that the department is steadfast in its commitment to advancing groundbreaking biomedical research and that it continues to invest strategically in research that tackles in the current era s urgent challenges Majority of of the UCLA funding freezes affected foundational science that doesn t directly involve patients but has the likely to vastly improve medication David Shackelford a researcher exploring novel avenues to stunt the increase of therapy-resistant lung cancer commented he was nearing a possible breakthrough for treating the affection which kills in patients within five years of a identification I m not used to my science being politicized Shackelford declared It s cancer We should never even be having this discussion As court battles play out Democratic state legislators are considering placing a billion bond on next year s ballot dedicating state funds to continue advances in cancer stroke and infectious disorder research among other scientific research But state bond money if approved by voters wouldn t come close to replacing federal grants which traditionally finance the lion s share of biomedical research In alone for example roughly billion in NIH funding flowed to California with billion of that going to universities And the proposed bond would be broad one-time funding that could pay for other inquiry areas such as conditions change research marine ecosystems or wildfire prevention UC President James Milliken reported the possibility of even bigger federal cuts to the state s second-largest employer would have ripple effects across California s financial sector While other universities have sued the Trump administration UC leaders have instead engaged in good faith dialogue with the Justice Department in hopes of negotiating a settlement Milliken revealed S Thomas Carmichael a neurologist at UCLA reported about grants totaling million from the NIH including studies of migraines epilepsy and autism were frozen in his department at the David Geffen School of Medicine As bad as funding cuts are he warned of the Trump administration s ability to attack a school s accreditation to limit visas for international students or to launch investigations It s essentially a complete and total power mismatch to take the federal administration on Carmichael declared If you purely give no ground yield nothing you won t win Separately in mid-September a group of UC labor unions and faculty associations filed suit against the federal establishment claiming the threat to research funds amounted to financial coercion to adopt campus policies that would restrict free speech A hearing in that matter is scheduled for December Brenda L a UCLA person noted she was devastated when a scan in led to her stage lung cancer assessment at age After months on Tagrisso a drug considered the gold standard for treating this particular cancer her tumors started growing again Brenda declined to provide her full name because she hasn t disclosed her finding to several family members I was just feeling like well that s the end of me explained Brenda who s now and lives in Bakersfield She joined a clinical trial and has been taking another experimental drug alongside Tagrisso for two years The combination has all but stopped the cancer s progression I m the lucky one stated Brenda whose current trial has not been impacted Other patients they should have that same chance This article 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