The BDN Opinion section operates independently and does not set news policies or contribute to reporting or editing articles elsewhere in the newspaper or on bangordailynews.com
Amy Fried is a retired political science professor at the University of Maine. Her views are her own and do not represent those of any group with which she is affiliated.
Do you know anyone who’s ever had cancer? What about a heart condition, arthritis, or diabetes?
I can’t imagine many people don’t. I sure do and am still dealing with ovarian cancer myself.
Happily science and medicine keeps developing, enabling people to live longer, healthier lives. We now have targeted, more effective cancer treatments relying on understanding genetics.
Yet last week President Donald Trump took steps harming biomedical research.
The National Institutes of Health is a jewel of the federal government. NIH has 27 different centers that focus on some diseases or systems in one’s body.
Some research is done by NIH employees, but NIH also funds research all over the country. Maine received $125 million in grants last year, two-thirds of which went to the Second Congressional District.
Getting funds depends on a complex process with rigorous review. Highly trained experts write proposals for competitive grants; these are assessed by other experts in NIH study sections. They also develop agendas for new, cutting edge research.
Out of the blue the Trump administration halted study sections, sometimes in the middle of a session.
How does that matter? Well, no study panels means no grants. No grants means no federally funded research. No federally funded research means far fewer research breakthroughs. Far fewer research breakthroughs means far fewer new, effective treatments.
As an article in Nature notes, Trump’s NIH steps harm younger researchers, who could lose their jobs if they don’t win grants and publish research results. Graduate students in the sciences are also often supported by grants won by their professors. Thus halting funding hurts the pipeline of new scientists and their contributions to medical research.
Trump has also disrupted NIH spending, putting ongoing clinical trials in jeopardy. If supplies had run out, researchers wouldn’t be able to do tests required by their study designs. As one scientist noted, then “the research results would be compromised, and he would have to recruit new patients.”
Dr. Esther Choo, whose study section was canceled, explained on Bluesky social, “Every cycle there is something you read that feels like a game changer in health care…There are real people, real lives waiting on the science.”
But there’s more.
The Trump administration also made it harder to track and counter infectious diseases like bird flu, norovirus and COVID.
For the first time in 60 years, the Centers for Disease Control did not publish the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report last week.
As Dr. Tom Frieden, who led the CDC for nearly eight years, said: “The bottom line is every day the publication is delayed, doctors, nurses, hospitals, local health departments, and first responders are behind the information curve and less prepared to protect the health of all Americans.”
Beyond this essential report, the CDC stopped posting updates on its website about the location and prevalence of infectious diseases.
None of this is remotely normal and, given the very real possibility of another pandemic, it’s truly dangerous.
I think this is happening for two reasons.
One, President Trump and his allies were bothered that Trump’s statements about COVID were contradicted by information provided by agencies and experts. In 2020 an appointee tried to stop the publication of the MMWR and claimed that “scientists battling the virus are conspiring against President Donald Trump.” Last week Trump stripped security from Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a public face of the federal government’s COVID response during the pandemic, and proclaimed he wouldn’t be responsible for any harm to Fauci.
Also, numerous Republicans — including the authors of Project 2025 — don’t want the federal government to do much of anything.
Halting these efforts to stop and track diseases means people will suffer.
What can you do about this? Contact your federal representatives to ask them to act and express their views.
A note to readers: This is my last scheduled column for the Bangor Daily News. It’s been a great run, going back to fall 2011. One focus then was voting rights, which will again be an issue facing Maine voters in the form of a voter suppression ballot measure. Before becoming a columnist, I submitted op-eds from time to time. I intend to continue to write for the general public, including in these pages. I hope many of you will submit letters to the editor and columns. Thank you to this paper for this opportunity and for your readership and feedback.
