Trump policy capping NIH indirect costs at 15% will cripple biomedical research

They’ve agreed to invade just one at a time. Can you imagine how hard it would be to learn Russian and Mandarin at the same time, not to mention the script ?

 

Wooohooo! Keep breaking things Pubs. Winning!

 

Scumbag cons already jockeying to exempt themselves from Musk-cuts. They finally had someone explain to them how all of this funding works and pointed out to Britt Alabama's biggest public employer is about to financially gut-punched.

MSN

 

Not surprised. I assume there will be a stop on this, and then the real negotiating will commence.

 

'The politics are bad': Ex-Republican warns Trump just made a huge blunder

Additionally, Kristol notes that the cuts won't just affect major institutions such as Harvard or Yale that can survive the reduced payments, but also universities in red states that are more reliant on federal funding.

"Most of the indirect cost money goes to other institutions, including public universities and hospitals, that aren’t swimming in extra cash," he writes. "Scientists and researchers of all political persuasions will be pointing this out. And many of these institutions are in red states. That’s why over the weekend Republican Sen. Katie Britt from Alabama refused to defend the cuts. The politics of NIH cuts are bad for Trump."

On top of all this, writes Kristol, "It may also be worth noting that what the Trump administration is doing is illegal," given that "congressional legislation appropriating funds for NIH prohibits the executive branch from making changes in how NIH funds overhead costs."

 

what good is a court order if they refuse to follow it?

 

You can have a million lawsuits, but if they’re not going to follow or respect court rulings and there’s no way to enforce court rulings it doesn’t matter. I’m not trying to be a doomsayer by any means but we’re getting to a really bad place right now…

 

I run clinical trials. NIH supported studies are a pain. Often lots of unneeded measures that add to the complexity of the studies. IDC rates are akin to the “overhead” costs we get when running trials for pharma. We are lucky to get 35%. If that’s how they are inflating their budgets it may be a good thing.

In Alzheimer’s research the sites that are university based don’t do very well (compared to non academic sites). The amount of red tape is staggering. It can months and months just because there are so many committees that need to sign off.
2 years ago we dumped an Alzheimer’s prevention trial. The premise was great, the drug was great but the logistics to get a subject from screening to randomization was ridiculous. It took 5 months to get one subject approved when a similar trial with Roche took 5 weeks.
They had so many different people how had to verify the subject could go to the next step it was nuts. Add to that their Electronic data capture system was so terrible one of my top Coordinators nearly left because of it.

NIH is needed because they do help fund basic research that Big Pharma may not be looking into, but my experience is when the GOV is involved it cost ore and takes 5 times as long.

 

Do you really think the best researchers in the US are gonna move to China?
Seriously?

 

Quite a few are from China. And yes, for the right lab and money, you will see recruiting of academics. Already happening in some fields. China is developing some world class research groups. The US is light years in front, but if you cut off the ability to do research...people won't stick around for it.

 

Sounds like NIH has a lot of measures in place to ensure accountability and prevent fraud. Just like USAID.

And yet the Trumpy/Musky public lies continue.

 

So the Chinese will go home, I doubt American researchers will go moving to China.
More likely they will go private sector.

 

Nah it’s not about preventing fraud, it’s about 25 people evaluating something that any big pharmaceutical company has 2-3 do.
It seems it more like creating extra jobs that really aren’t needed.
Not sure about “accountability” either. The Alzheimer’s prevention trial I’m speaking of has been screening for 4 years. A very similar Eli Lilly trial took 18 months to get a similar number of people randomized with almost the same inclusion criteria.
Fact is the longer it takes to screen people for a trial the more it costs.
Now I’m speaking only about pharma trials here.

 

OK. While I know quite a bit about the other stuff, I obviously know far less than you about NIH, etc.

I'm sure that Elon Musk will correct everything though. He really cares about America and Americans. He's had their best interests at heart all along. (seems funny to even type)

 

Is Eil Lily going to perform the research for the public good or chase profit margin? I think you know the answer

 

It isn't just China. And a lot of other researchers are immigrants to the US because of the research environment. Pull the research funds away and they will happily go elsewhere (academic or practice).

Not everybody's research lends itself to pharma companies.

 

No. But there is a massive brain drain going on to Europe right now. EU companies are targeting tech, finance, and healthcare sectors

Liberal tech workers weigh up moving to Europe after Trump victory | Sifted

US scientists feeling ‘stress and fear’ as sweeping Trump orders hit funding | US news | The Guardian