Professor of Harvard University Alberto Ascherio is literally frozen.
The epidemiological and nutritionist who has been collected from millions of US soldiers for two decades using millions of dollars from taxpayers has blood samples stored in the freezers of liquid nitrogen within the Chan School of Public Health.
Samples are the key to its award -winning research looking for a drug for multiple sclerosis and other neurodegenerative diseases. For several months, however, Ascherio could not work with samples because he lost $ 7 million in federal research financing, a victim of Harvard’s struggle with Trump administration.
“It’s as if we have created the most modern telescope to explore the universe, and now we don’t have the money to start it,” Ascherio said. “We have built everything and now we are ready to use it to create a new discovery that could affect millions of people in the world, and then:” Poof.
Scientists released and science postponed
A loss of $ 2.6 billion for federal financing in Harvard meant that some of the most important scientists in the world were leaving young scientists. They have been racks for years or even decades of research, to everything from dependence on opioids to cancer.
And despite the Harvard courts against the administration and interviews of settlement between the fighting parties, scientists confront the fact that some of their work may never restore.
Funding cuts are part of the monthly battle, which Trump’s administration led against some of the best universities in the country, including Columbia, Brown and Northwestern. The administration took a particularly aggressive attitude against Harvard, frozen financing after the oldest university in the country rejected a number of government requirements issued by federal anti -Semitism.
The government demanded extensive changes in Harvard related to the protests of the campus, academics and acceptance-the accusation of the government that the university has become a focus of liberalism and tolerated anti-Jewish harassment.
Research is endangered even if the judicial case prevails
Harvard responded by filing the Federal Court and accused Trump’s administration of the management of a retaliation campaign against the university. In court proceedings, she set reforms she adopted to deal with anti -Semitism, but also promised that “she would not give up her independence or give up her constitutional rights”.
“Do not make a mistake: Harvard rejects anti -Semitism and discrimination in all its forms and actively performs structural reforms to remove anti -Semitism on the campus,” the university said in its legal complaint. “But rather than engage in Harvard about these ongoing efforts, the government announced an extensive freezing funding for medical, scientific, technological and other research, which has nothing to do with anti -Semitism at all.”
Trump’s administration denies that the cuts were made with a retaliation and said the grants were reviewed before the requirements were sent in April. He claims that the government has a broad authority to abolish federal treaties for political reasons.
The cuts of funding left Harvard’s research community in a state of shock, feeling as if they were unfairly focused in combat, with nothing to do with them. Some were forced to close laboratories or try to find the funding of non -governmental means to replace the lost money.
In May, Harvard announced that he would create at least $ 250 million to continue his research efforts, but Alan Garber’s President Alan Garber warned against “difficult decisions and victims”.
Ascherio said that the university was able to combine funds to pay the salaries of its scientists until June. However, he remained without resources needed to finance critical research tasks such as laboratory work. Even the annual delay can return his research for five years, he said.
Knowledge lost in freezing of financing
“It’s really devastating,” agreed Rita Hamad, the director of social policies for the Harvard Research Center, which had three multi -year grants worth a total of $ 10 million abolished by Trump administration. Grants funded research into the impact of segregation of schools on heart health, as pandemic policies in more than 250 districts influenced the mental health and the role of neighboring factors in dementia.
At the Public Health School, where Hamad is founded, 190 grants were completed, which influenced about 130 scientists.
“I’m just thinking about all knowledge that will not be obtained or which will be actively lost,” Hamad said. He expects a significant release in his team if freezing financing continues for several months. “It’s all just a mixture of frustration and anger and sadness all the time, every day.”
John Quackenbush, a professor of computer biology and bioinformatics on School of Public Health, spent last few months permanent cuts on multiple fronts.
In April, a grant for multimillion dollars was not restored, threatening the study of the role when sexual playing in illness. In May, he lost about $ 1.2 million for federal financing next year due to Harvard freezing. In the fight with Trump administration, four $ 24 million grants that financed doctoral students were also abolished, Quackenbush said.
“I’m in a position where I really have to think:” Can I revive this research? “I said.” Can I restart these programs even if Harvard and Trump’s administration achieve some kind of settlement? If they reach the settlement, how quickly can the funding be turned back? Can it be turned on? “
All scientists agreed that the cuts of financing have little or nothing to do with the fight of the university against anti -Semitism. However, some claim that changes in Harvard have long been delayed and pressure from Trump’s administration was necessary.
Bertha Madras, a Harvard psychobiology who has lost funds to create free training focused on parents to prevent overdose by adolescent opioid and drug use, said she was happy to see what he called “politically motivated social science”.
White House pressure a good thing?
Madras said that the pressure from the White House catalyzed the much needed reform at the university, where several study programs “really left the wall in terms of forming Orthodoxy, which is not representative of the country as a whole”.
But Madras, who served the President’s Opioid Commission during the first term of Trump, said that the possession of scientists to finance research as a hostage as a chip of negotiation makes no sense.
“I don’t know if the reform would happen without the president of the United States that directed the bony finger on Harvard,” she said. “But the sacrifice of science is problematic and it is very worrying because it is one of the main pillars of the Earth’s power.”
Quackenbush and other Harvard scientists say cuts are part of a major attack on science by Trump’s administration that threatens the reputation of the country as a leader of global research. Support for students and postdoToToRandan members has been reduced, visas for foreign scholars are at risk and new instructions and cuts in NIH will be much more difficult to obtain federal financing in the future, they said. It will also be difficult to replace federal funding with money from the private sector.
“We all move to this future in which this 80 -year partnership between government and universities will be endangered,” Quackenbush said. “We will face real challenges in continuing the world leadership in scientific perfection.”
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