🌅 Federal Cuts Are Impacting Cancer Research

SOURCE

Patel et al. (2025)

WHAT TO KNOW

• The Trump administration’s unprecedented cuts to funding for the National Institutes of Health has affected 383 clinical trials nationwide, including trials testing treatments for conditions like cancer, heart disease, and brain disease. The cuts have affected 74,000 people enrolled in experiments and disproportionately impacted trials investigating the spread of infectious diseases, like the flu, pneumonia, and COVID-19. Though Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. continues to bizarrely claim the administration hasn’t cut funding for research, the present study clearly shows otherwise.

WHY IT MATTERS

• Beyond the NIH, Trump’s dismantling of USAID—which research shows has saved the lives of 92 million people over the past two decades—has caused the death of at least 600,000 people worldwide, two-thirds of which are children. Experts say Trump’s cuts have also impacted research universities, like Harvard, Columbia, Northwestern, Johns Hopkins University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as the US Geological Survey’s Climate Adaptation Science Centers, which helps humans, wildlife, water, and land adapt to rising temperatures.

CONNECT THE DOTS

• From 2000 to 2020, the annual number of children around the world who died before their 5th birthday dropped by half, falling from roughly 10 million deaths per year to under 5 million per year. Now, for the first time this century, child deaths around the world are expected to rise, driven by a historic 26% drop in foreign aid, partly driven by budget cuts in the U.S. If global health funding persists at current levels, researchers estimate there will be 12 million excess childhood deaths by 2045.