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

This article first appeared on KFF Healthcare News Subscribe to KFF Medical News free Morning Briefing In August an -year-old woman walked into the exigency room at Ronald Reagan UCLA Physiological Center She was lucid but experiencing a stroke Within minutes doctors appealed 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 needed to know Would this investigation 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 medication was delayed noted 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 disclosed Patients and researchers such as Saver have located 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 evolving 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 largest part They also worry that funding cuts mired in legal challenges could discourage would-be scientists from entering the field reducing the chances for diagnostic 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 reported The reasons for the suspension don t seem to tie into the work we re doing In July the National Institutes of Fitness the National Science Foundation and the Potency Department froze million in healthcare and science research grants to UCLA after the Justice Department mentioned 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 vitality care to reinstate the grants Yet the federal ruling body plays a crucial role in funding lifesaving research that industry has little incentive to back Saver reported healing discoveries made in the past years have been transformative for stroke care To keep eight clinical trials afloat Saver reported 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 informed the stroke person not to worry Given the need to inquiry her particular features 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 revealed 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 Particular 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 selected billion in grants to Harvard was illegal Still researchers worry the relief is temporary Even with the district court s restoration the scenario 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 revealed 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 Bureaucrats at the U S Department of Healthcare and Human Services did not respond to questions about foreseen harm done to studies while the funds were frozen or criticisms that they are wrongly politicizing money for potentially lifesaving research In a message 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 mentioned in a follow-up report 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 The majority of the UCLA funding freezes affected foundational science that doesn t directly involve patients but has the probable to vastly improve medicine David Shackelford a researcher exploring novel methods to stunt the enhancement of therapy-resistant lung cancer explained he was nearing a prospective breakthrough for treating the condition which kills in patients within five years of a evaluation I m not used to my science being politicized Shackelford explained 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 illness 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 assessment areas such as setting change research marine ecosystems or wildfire prevention UC President James Milliken revealed 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 noted S Thomas Carmichael a neurologist at UCLA stated 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 cabinet on Carmichael reported If you solely 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 administration 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 person revealed 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 evaluation to several family members I was just feeling like well that s the end of me noted 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 article was produced by KFF Wellbeing News which publishes California Healthline an editorially independent utility of the California Medical Care Foundation KFF Fitness News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about fitness issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF an independent source of vitality agenda research polling and journalism Learn more about KFF