Researchers decry ‘freeze on science’ as confusion reigns over Trump administration medical funding

Canadian scientists say the uncertainty surrounding U.S. President Donald Trump’s apparent pause on federal health spending could stall research on new drugs, vaccines, and treatments for cancer, dementia and more — including at labs in Canada.

The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) powers some of the best scientists around the world. Most of its $47-billion US budget last year funded research that the agency deemed  could “enhance health, lengthen life, reduce illness and disability.”  That includes work being done by Canadian researchers, who received over $40 million US of funding last year.

Now there’s confusion. On Jan. 21, the Trump administration imposed a communication freeze until Feb. 1 for federal health officials. At the NIH, that meant key meetings that decide which scientific research to fund were cancelled, with no word on when they would be rescheduled.  

This week, an NIH webpage on grants and funding, a dashboard for researchers, announced unspecified changes that will affect “research project grants, fellowships and training grants” submitted on or after Jan. 25. 

Adding to the chaos: in a separate move, the administration also froze hundreds of billions of dollars in federal grants, loans and aid Monday, before reversing course Wednesday.  

All this is leaving many scientists — including those in Canada — unsure of the future of their work. 

Canadian Steffanie Strathdee moved to the U.S. in 1998 and receives NIH funding for her HIV prevention research. She is awaiting word on a new grant submission for $12 million US and had a meeting scheduled with the NIH next week about it. 

“When I opened my computer and saw that NIH dollars were frozen, I was stunned,” Strathdee said.

Strathdee is a professor at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine. The research involves following large groups of people who use drugs over time to study HIV and hepatitis C. Some of her work includes studies in Canada with people who use drugs to inform prevention and treatment in the U.S., Canada and beyond. 

Strathdee said most researchers she knows have already been affected by the temporary freezes on meetings, travel, communication and hiring at the NIH. 

“At the very best scenario, we’re facing a significant funding delay, and that means that the livelihoods of my staff and my students, both in Canada and the U.S., are being affected.”

Future consequences?

Researchers working at Canadian universities are also anxious about the lack of clarity. 

Nathan Spreng is the James McGill Professor in the department of neurology and neurosurgery at McGill University in Montreal, where he studies how the brain changes as we get older. The NIH has funded his research into loneliness, brain aging and Alzheimer’s disease. 

Research like Spreng’s, if underfunded, could delay the development of future treatments.

“The consequences of this are just real human suffering,” Spreng said. “There are a number of diseases and injuries that are not well treated at the moment. Absent this kind of funding, these people will just continue to suffer.”

NIH funding contributed to the development of all but two of 356 drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration between 2010 and 2019, a 2023 article in JAMA Health Forum suggests.

Spreng said that the main concern right now within the scientific community is about NIH study sections, expert-led panels who rank grant proposals for funding. 

“It’s not going to be felt immediately,” Spreng said. “It’s going to take a number of years for a kind of cumulative impact to emerge, but across the board, what we’ll see are fewer treatments, fewer innovations in medicine and the persistence of ill health.”

Science community feeling a chill

An exception, according to a memo first reported on Monday by Stat, a U.S.-based health and medical news site, allows people enrolled in clinical trials of potential medications to travel to the study sites.

But ongoing confusion about impact on the wider NIH research funding continues.

“It is really is putting a freeze on science,” and the chill is being felt throughout the science community, said Jim Woodgett, a cancer researcher at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute at Toronto’s Sinai Health and the Terry Fox Research Institute.

“We don’t know a lot about the details, and they seem to be changing every second,” he said. “I think that uncertainty actually is adding to the crisis.” 

Woodgett notes the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, the main funder of medical research in this country, has a budget of about $1.4 billion. Since 2016, the Government of Canada invested $22 billion on science and research initiatives. For comparison, the NIH alone spends more than double that every year — over $47 billion US or $67 billion in Canadian dollars. 

Strathdee, the HIV scientist, said the uncertainty with U.S. funding opens the door for Canada to increase research funding and attract top American scientists — or bring Canadians back home. 

“This is an opportunity for not brain drain, but brain gain,” Strathdee said. “I’m just one of many people that want to come back home and have never given up on my collaborations in Canada.”

A spokesperson for the federal minister of innovation, science and industry told CBC News that the government is watching the development on science and research funding in the U.S. closely. 

Strathdee, who currently commutes between San Diego and Toronto, is hedging her bets. 

“If things continue to erode in the United States and it’s a deliberate erosion of the public health infrastructure, then I’ll be revisiting my decision about where I’m going to put the rest of my time in my career.”