1. United States
2. Ohio
3. Letter

In the last two weeks, we heard that President Trump was looking to cut the NIH budget and freezing all grant funding, a move that resulted in bipartisan backlash in Congress and a temporary reprieve from the directive. Clearly upset about being balked by his own party, the president then issued his EO on federal grantmaking, once again freezing federal grants and ultimately putting their fate in the hands of political appointees rather than qualified, independent scientific reviewers. While I am sure there is an occasional grant that is awarded to a bad actor, it has been broadly shown time and time again that government grants from NIH, NSF and others overwhelmingly improve life for Americans by fostering innovations that would otherwise go unfunded. And, of course, like private investments that occasionally result in significant losses, not all research will ultimately result in technological breakthroughs. However, start-up companies everywhere rely on SBIR and similar grants to advance their technologies to a point where it becomes attractive to investors and/or acquirers, and pulling the plug on this funding even temporarily will cause enormous setbacks in advances across many fields. My own employer has a pending SBIR application, which was scored very highly by the scientific review panel but is now in limbo because of the ever changing whims of this administration. Even though this application fits beautifully into the MAHA initiatives being touted so vocally, this president’s desire to be in total control and, frankly, to stick it to the other side has the potential to completely derail a diagnostic platform that could change healthcare forever in the best possible way. I ask you to once again step up and stand up for innovation and progress, for growth of America’s leadership in the scientific world, and to try to reintroduce some common sense into this discussion. It is easy for pundits to cherry pick grants that may seem superficially frivolous; however, the track record of groundbreaking innovation as a result of these programs speaks for itself. Sure, perform audits on existing grants to ensure financial and scientific honesty. Penalize scientists and institutions committing fraud. But do not throw out the baby with the bath water by halting all grant funding for everyone, no matter how temporarily. This can only backfire in the long term. Your constituents are relying on you to speak up and challenge this latest EO and to quickly allow NIH and other grant funding to be unfrozen!