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The Trump administration’s drastic and reckless cuts in funding for research funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will hurt all Americans. I have been a grant editor for about 27 years, working with scientists at The Jackson Laboratory and MDI Biological Laboratory to help their grant applications obtain funding. Most of the grant applications I have worked on have been NIH grants seeking funds for research aimed at understanding human diseases with the ultimate goal of discovering new treatments or cures.
NIH-funded research has led to advances in treatment of many diseases including diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. In Maine, NIH-funded research is a critical component of the fight against cancer.
Every scientist I have worked with is dedicated to helping people live healthier lives. They spend years performing experiments to lay the foundation for their applications to fund their next projects, while also managing their laboratory groups and attending national meetings to keep up to date on research in their field.
The cuts proposed by the Trump administration will stall or halt important disease research in Maine and throughout the U.S., in turn resulting in people living less healthy and shorter lives. This will also likely lead to the loss of jobs for scientists and the dedicated people at their institutions who support their work.
Higher rates of disease and thousands of lost jobs are not a good trade-off for trimming a tiny proportion of the federal budget or trying to dismantle the “deep state.”
Stephen Sampson
Southwest Harbor
