Doctors and researchers of academic institutions fear that the decision of the National Health Institutes to reduce the financing of indirect research can stop medical progress and negatively affect patient care.
Indirect financing covers things such as equipment, buildings, maintenance, public services and support personnel.
The funds are not used to directly support patient care But they are crucial For basic operations in research institutions, said Dr. Theodore Iwashyna, a pulmonologist and critical care doctor of the Johns Hopkins Faculty of Medicine, which he paid for computers, slate, microscopes, electricity and concierge and personnel who keep the laboratories clean and organized.
The money supports “the research infrastructure,” said Iwashyna, who depends on NIH’s financing for chronic disease research, including pneumonia, among the main causes of hospitalizations in the United States.
Iwashyna’s father had pancreas cancer, and the care plan developed for him existed only due to an investigation funded through organizations such as NIH.
“Everyone who comes to a place like Johns Hopkins, who come to a place like Ohio’s State University to obtain a second opinion, the ability to do it depends on the research they are doing,” he said.
According to the new NIH policy, which temporarily entered into force on Monday, payments for indirect costs will be limited to 15%, below around 27% or more, a reduction, said Iwashyna, which will cost jobs and prevent the Experts investigate important medical problems including cancer, diabetes and heart disease.
On Monday, however, a federal judge temporarily arrested the new policy after a claim of 22 state general prosecutors.
The demand said that the change will be “immediate and devastating” and “will result in dismissals, suspension of clinical trials, interruption of ongoing research programs and laboratory closures.”
Dr. Robert Golden, dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Public Health of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that indirect costs are not only administrative or “waste” tasks, but the physical structures and the team had to do “research from High level “.
“I have been in several public institutions, including NIH at the beginning of my career, and I have never seen waste in a surprising title,” he said.
The change of NIH, Golden said, “will have a deep significant impact on everything,” including public service positions, building laboratories where scientific experiments are carried out and priests are found for patients.
What is a direct cost in the investigation?
“Direct costs” cover things such as clinical research, patient care and scientists’ salaries.
“The direct cost is the edible,” Golden said. “Indirect costs are the money you need to have a refrigerator and pay its electric bill so that milk and eggs do not go wrong.”
The amount given to the institutions varies and is based on a percentage of direct research costs in a subsidy. The renowned institutions, such as Hopkins, often get larger rates.
Matthew Cook, president and CEO of the Children’s Hospital Association, which represents more than 200 children’s hospitals, urged the Trump administration to terminate its guidance.
“Reducing the indirect cost rate will threaten the ability of children’s hospitals to provide future innovative priests for children,” Cook said in a statement.
NIH estimates that its cost reduction movement could save the government and taxpayers more than $ 4 billion a year.
Elon Musk, the chief of the group designated by Trump aimed at reducing federal expenditure, praised NIH’s announcement on his social media platform X, qualifying the previous policy “A scam!” Musk cited a NIH publication that said last year, $ 9 billion of the $ 35 billion that the agency awarded for the investigation was used for administrative general expenses, also known as indirect costs.
Other medical and academic groups retreated the new NIH policy.
The president of Harvard University, Dr. Alan Garber, who is also a doctor, said in an email on Monday that the discovery of new treatments will slow down and the opportunity to train the next generation of scientific leaders will be reduced.
Indirect costs “are substantial, and are inevitable, especially because it can be very expensive to build, maintain and equip space to conduct research at knowledge borders,” he said.
In a statement, Dr. Tina Tan, president of the Society of Infectious Diseases of America, said the cuts “will eliminate the promise of medical treatments that save lives.”
“It will leave our nation less safe and more vulnerable to disease outbreaks and biotersror attacks, and harmed our economy,” he said so.
