When Peter Lurie first learned that President Donald Trump had cut federal funding for his HIV research, he was shocked.
But he quickly realized why.
“You can see exactly how they identified the grant that I was on as a target,” Lurie told Business Insider. “There is some mention of trans people, and that apparently is enough to kill off research.”
Lurie is in a group of researchers who sued the Trump administration for cutting National Institute of Health funding for a range of projects, including research on Alzheimer’s, reproductive health, cancer, and diabetes. Lurie was on a two-year NIH grant of nearly $300,000 that Trump terminated on March 21. As a result, “certain answers that might actually stem the HIV epidemic, for example, will not be found,” Lurie said.
Researchers, scientists, and education policy experts told BI that Trump’s abrupt freezing of billions of federal dollars might do more than block progress in scientific research. It could result in fewer Nobel prizes, more brain drain, and a handcuffing of AI innovation. They said the US could lose its edge as students and scientists take their talents to other places, like China and Europe, that would fund their research.
The Trump administration has said that universities that do not comply with its demands, including axing DEI practices, are subject to funding cuts. The NIH also issued a statement on April 21 stating that it would pull medical research funding from schools with DEI programs and those with boycotts of Israeli goods.
Some researchers also said there is room for improvement in the higher education funding system, including a closer look at the burdensome process to receive funding and more transparency on where taxpayer dollars go. However, Lurie said, shutting off funding so abruptly will do more harm than good.
“The US and the NIH in particular have been the envy of the world when it comes to medical research. And what is already starting to happen is that the United States is starting to slip,” Lurie said. “It means that there will be people who will go elsewhere for support. It means that there are people who will leave the country for lack of support. So I think that it absolutely endangers the United States’ position as the global leader in medical research. And for that, we will pay.”
The White House, NIH, and the Department of Education did not respond to a request for comment from BI.
‘Once you lose your edge in this area, it’s very difficult to come back’
The US has won nearly 400 Nobel prizes in physics, chemistry, and medicine, the highest number in the world. Of those prizes, 174 scientists who worked on 104 of the prizes were funded by the NIH.
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Robert J. Lefkowitz contributed to that — he won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2012 for discovering a family of receptors used in about half of all medications today. He told BI that “a good part” of his funding over his years of research came from the NIH.
“The biomedical research enterprise in the United States is by far the leading one in the world, and the NIH is undoubtedly the biggest supporter of that,” Lefkowitz said. And while the cuts themselves are a cause for concern, the uncertainty with the future of impacted programs is leaving universities scrambling to figure out their next steps, he added.
He also said that as a result of the cuts, students and trainees won’t be able to participate in ongoing research, which could lead them to seek employment elsewhere — including outside the US — to receive funding.
“It’s a bad situation, and I have the perspective of having been in the game for roughly 60 years, I’ve never seen anything to rival this,” Lefkowitz said.
For years, Trump has proposed and enacted a range of policies that he said would put America at the top, summed up catchily with his campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.” His administration has said that freezing funding at universities that do not comply with the administration’s demands to limit campus activism and DEI practices reflects the administration’s goals to put America first.
Trump suggested in a post on Truth Social on April 15, for example, that he would consider removing Harvard’s tax-exempt status if it continues to fund what he called a “political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?'”
Columbia University agreed to Trump’s demands to preserve the $400 million in federal funding it receives, but other universities, including Harvard, are holding the line. Glenn Altschuler, a professor of American studies at Cornell University, told BI that as Trump continues to escalate his funding threats, the US could lose critical talent that would’ve kept the country a leader in scientific innovation.
Altschuler said it’s likely that other countries, like China, will soon start trying to attract American researchers by offering to pay for their labs, travel, and research. “And those scientists, at least some of them, depending on what their life circumstances are, may find that a very attractive option. So whereas for decades and decades and decades, the brain drain operated to the advantage of the United States, now the brain drain may operate to the detriment of things,” he said.
That’s already starting to take shape — Emmanuel Macron, president of France, recently promoted on LinkedIn a project to attract international scientists to conduct their research in France.
“Here in France, research is a priority, innovation is a culture, and science is a boundless horizon,” Macron wrote.
Altschuler said the US will probably not realize the impact of Trump’s funding freezes for years, and at that point, it could be too late to repair the damage.
“We may lose a significant next generation of important researchers in medicine and in science. And what I would emphasize is, we’ll never know, ever, what discoveries were not made,” Altschuler said. “We’ll never know what advances in technology were never made. And once you lose your edge in this area, it’s very difficult to come back. It’ll take a very long time to come back.”
‘It should concern everybody when those dollars are being cut’
Changing the way colleges receive federal funding isn’t a bad idea, Beth Akers, a senior fellow at the conservative think-tank American Enterprise Institute, told BI.
“I think it’s fair to ask, what is the appropriate amount of federal funding? And I think there is a sense that maybe the amount of funding for research that institutions have become accustomed to might be overly generous,” Akers said. “We may be funding some things that, if taxpayers understood where their money was going, they might not be thrilled about.”
Still, Akers said the abruptness of university funding freezes has made them “more of a wasteful and destructive process than is really necessary.” She added that, had there been conversations over time with universities regarding funding cuts, researchers on ongoing projects would’ve had the opportunity to make plans to shut down or transfer their work elsewhere.
“A lot of stuff that will have begun will have to be abandoned,” Akers said.
And it’s not just science — technology is on the line, as well. Rebecca Willett, a professor of statistics and computer science at the University of Chicago, told BI that Trump’s funding cuts are putting artificial intelligence innovation at risk. While federal spending on AI is fairly low, Willet said, the industry has already made a significant mark through projects like ChatGPT and using AI to advance biomedical research. Cutting more funding would stifle those advancements.
“These are investments in areas that are really going to help advance society and be of real value to the taxpayers who are supporting this work,” Willett said. Cuts to those programs will not only lead the US to “miss out on important discoveries,” Willet said; it’ll also impact workforce development, as students will not have the resources to be properly trained to develop the next generation of technology tools.
For an administration that is so focused on keeping America at the top, it doesn’t add up, Willet said.
“Having taxpayer dollars help support and advance science is important for the long-term success and prosperity and security of the United States,” Willett said. “And I think that’s the way we should look at federal research dollars, and it should concern everybody when those dollars are being cut.”
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