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

This article first appeared on KFF Medical News Subscribe to KFF Vitality News free Morning Briefing In August an -year-old woman walked into the emergency room at Ronald Reagan UCLA Therapeutic Center She was lucid but experiencing a stroke Within minutes doctors demanded 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 craved to know Would this scrutiny be at peril potentially affecting her care Those worries put unnecessary pressure on a individual facing the loss of roughly million nerve cells every minute that restoration was delayed disclosed Jeffrey Saver a neurologist and longtime stroke researcher To then have to worry about what s happening with the funding from the federal executive is a needless increase in the stress patients are going through Saver explained Patients and researchers such as Saver have revealed 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 illness say scientific funding should not be politicized and warn that patients waiting for lifesaving treatments stand to lose the bulk They also worry that funding cuts mired in legal challenges could discourage would-be scientists from entering the field reducing the chances for medicinal breakthroughs I would have thought that stroke and Alzheimer s malady and all these conditions affect Democrats and Republicans alike and would be supported by everyone Saver reported The reasons for the suspension don t seem to tie into the work we re doing In July the National Institutes of Healthcare the National Science Foundation and the Potency Department froze million in biological and science research grants to UCLA after the Justice Department reported 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 governing body plays a crucial role in funding lifesaving research that industry has little incentive to back Saver revealed restoration discoveries made in the past years have been transformative for stroke care To keep eight clinical trials afloat Saver stated 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 reported the stroke case not to worry Given the need to scrutiny 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 commented in a announcement 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 Various 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 specific billion in grants to Harvard was illegal Still researchers worry the relief is temporary Even with the district court s restoration the occurrence 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 noted Jessica Levinson a constitutional law professor at Loyola Law School They should feel like this is a win but it s realizable that it s a short-lived one Leaders at the U S Department of Vitality and Human Services did not respond to questions about probable harm done to studies while the funds were frozen or criticisms that they are wrongly politicizing money for potentially lifesaving research In a announcement about the administration s campaign targeting antisemitism HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon mentioned 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 noted in a follow-up announcement 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 present day s urgent challenges Most of of the UCLA funding freezes affected foundational science that doesn t directly involve patients but has the prospective to vastly improve restoration David Shackelford a researcher exploring novel tactics to stunt the enhancement of therapy-resistant lung cancer declared he was nearing a expected breakthrough for treating the syndrome which kills in patients within five years of a determination I m not used to my science being politicized Shackelford announced 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 malady 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 survey areas such as surroundings change research marine ecosystems or wildfire prevention UC President James Milliken stated the possibility of even bigger federal cuts to the state s second-largest employer would have ripple effects across California s commercial 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 commented S Thomas Carmichael a neurologist at UCLA revealed 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 leadership on Carmichael revealed If you totally 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 authorities claiming the threat to research funds amounted to financial coercion to adopt campus policies that would restrict free speech A hearing in that affair is scheduled for December Brenda L a UCLA subject noted she was devastated when a scan in led to her stage lung cancer identification 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 specific family members I was just feeling like well that s the end of me announced 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 declared Brenda whose current trial has not been impacted Other patients they should have that same chance This 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