Editorial: Valentine’s Day Massacre

If you care about your health and those of your family and friends, pay attention to what is happening in Washington, DC right now, where Presidential orders are threatening to decimate the medical research critical to our health and well-being.

San Diego is home to an impressive number of premier medical research institutions including UC San Diego, Scripps Research Institute, the Salk Institute, Sanford-Burnham-Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, La Jolla institute for Immunology, and more. Del Mar is home to many of the scientists who conduct research at these institutions. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the primary source of the federal grants that support innovative research in basic and clinical science at these sites. That grant funding is now threatened by presidential orders that may freeze grant funds and/or reduce them by up to 50%. Both policies are being contested in the courts, but as of February 10th, the 15% cap on NIH indirect funds went into effect. California has joined 21 other states seeking to reverse these funding cuts. A judge in Massachusetts has placed a temporary restraining order (TRO) on the implementation of the 15% cut, but that order only applies to the 22 states party to the lawsuit. A second TRO extended the order to all states.

What are indirect funds and why would a 15% cap on them be so devastating for our local research institutions and our local economy. First, NIH grants to all local research entities total close to $2 billion per year. NIH grants have two components: direct costs that fund a specific research project including personnel costs, research supplies, and small equipment costs; indirect costs include personnel fringe benefits, administration, utilities, building maintenance, space leases, and some shared research services. Most of our local research institutions have indirect costs of 50% or more, numbers typical of the top tier of medical research sites nationwide. These rates are decided by detailed negotiation between NIH and each research entity, and they are good for 1 fiscal year unless an extension is given by NIH. No legal basis for changing the rate mid-year has been put forward and is unlikely to exist.

This sudden loss of NIH funding would cause many research projects to come to a halt and skilled laboratory and needed administrative personnel to be fired. The impact on our local economy could be as great as a $600 million loss. Funding uncertainty would lead scientists in training to consider other careers, and recruitment of promising new faculty would stop. The researchers who live in Del Mar would face difficult decisions about how to continue their efforts with fewer staff and less institutional support. Progress on research programs addressing cancer, infectious disease, aging, and other illnesses would inevitably be slowed, with long-lasting impacts to our health. All of these profound harms for a potential savings of less than 0.001% of the federal budget: Insane.