Massive Waste as Biomedical Research Dollars Go Down The Drain
By Dennis D. McDonald, Ph.D.
According to an analysis published in the April 4 issue of Science (online as Are terminations of NIH grants wasting billions of taxpayer dollars?), the premature cancellation of biomedical research grants by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will result in significant waste. Failure to complete these projects risks rendering many multi-stage and longitudinal studies useless.
For the canceled projects, the potential health benefits—or even lives that could have been saved—will never be realized, regardless of the short-term “savings” achieved by halting incremental funding.
My concern isn’t with the numbers themselves—the Science article notes caveats about the representativeness of the dollar figures—but rather with the failure to weigh costs and benefits that had already been evaluated when Congress approved the funding and grants were awarded through a peer-reviewed process.
While the immediate dollar “savings” might be measurable, the long-term costs may never be fully understood. These cuts are increasing unemployment, weakening U.S. colleges and research institutions, and driving away students and talented researchers—many of whom are now seeking opportunities to other countries.
Our former allies and adversaries may welcome this decline, but it is our children and grandchildren who will ultimately bear the consequences.
Copyright (c) 2025 by Dennis D. McDonald
