UC Davis professor on proposed NIH cuts: Public health cannot be treated as a political pawn | Opinion

Over the course of 45 years, I was fortunate to be awarded multiple grants from the National Institutes of Health to help support my university-based biomedical research and training programs. Our research at UC Davis focused on a basic understanding of the complex molecular processes that cause specific genes to be turned on and off in response to natural biological signals.

Now, however, charges of fraud, corruption and waste are being rapidly leveled against our government agencies, including the NIH.

The recent assessment of the NIH by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency demonstrates a fundamental failure to understand how the NIH and universities work together to advance critically important biomedical research and training.

It isn’t clear which university laboratory facility expense or initiative triggered the DOGE algorithms; nevertheless, the substantial budgetary cuts DOGE proposes would have crippling consequences for ongoing and future biomedical research.

Congress created the NIH more than a century ago. It has continuously appropriated funding for this agency in response to taxpayer demand for the health benefits that flow from biomedical research. Numerous NIH-funded investigators have been awarded national and international honors, and many have gone on to become Nobel Prize winners.

Decades of NIH-funded research has led to high impact medical advances, and selected examples include antiretroviral therapy for the long-term management of HIV/AIDS and immunotherapies initially developed to treat certain aggressive breast cancers that have now expanded to targeted treatments for a wide variety of human cancers.

I served on NIH review boards to evaluate research grant applications and recommend funding priorities. The process is carefully monitored, highly selective and merit-based. Only a relatively small number of grants are awarded.

In spite of the uncertainties intrinsic to exploratory scientific research, the majority of these funded programs are successful and produce highly valuable results.

I was privileged to train and supervise many talented UC Davis undergraduate and graduate students as well as postdoctoral fellows who joined the laboratory from other institutions. Our basic studies often led directly to clinical research applications. Examples of our work include efforts focused on vaccine development and studies of abnormal changes in gene expression associated with human cancers, with the objective being to identify novel targets for cancer therapy and diagnostics. The UC Davis academic environment and programs like the UC Davis Medical Center Cancer Center, promoted these research collaborations.

The results of NIH-funded research are published in widely circulated peer-reviewed journals. These results are scrupulously studied and verified findings are incorporated into multiple independent research programs across the globe. The research is impactful, benefiting all aspect of our lives — from nutrition to treatment, cure and the prevention of disease.

Among government agencies, the NIH has earned a superb reputation for efficiency and public benefit. NIH funds numerous basic and clinical research programs, clinical trials for new treatments and a wide variety of healthcare outreach programs throughout our local communities and states.

Recipients of NIH funds include public and private universities, hospitals, medical centers and clinics. NIH-funded biomedical research provides the scientific foundation that guides development of novel medicines, therapies, diagnostic tests and vaccines by pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.

Fellow scientists, health care professionals and all those who have benefited from healthcare initiatives supported by the NIH can help by speaking up and motivating elected officials to protect the NIH and its vital missions from the crippling budgetary cuts proposed by the Trump administration.

Public health is too important to be treated as a political pawn.