In August, an 80-year-old woman walked into the emergency room at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. She was lucid but experiencing a stroke. Within minutes, doctors asked for permission to pull out the stroke-causing clot before any more brain damage could occur.
She hesitated. The procedure was part of a clinical trial, and she’d heard about a federal freeze on research grants to UCLA. She wanted to know: Would this study be at risk, potentially affecting her care?
Those worries put unnecessary pressure on a patient facing the loss of roughly 2 million nerve cells every minute that treatment was delayed, said Jeffrey Saver, a neurologist and longtime stroke researcher.
“To then have to worry about what’s happening with the funding from the federal government is a needless increase in the stress patients are going through,” Saver said.
Patients and researchers such as Saver have found themselves caught in the middle as the Trump administration has accused major universities of antisemitism and bias, pulling research funds in an attempt to extract concessions.
Scientists who have spent their lives developing treatments for lung cancer, brain tumors, and Alzheimer’s disease say scientific funding should not be politicized — and warn that patients waiting for lifesaving treatments stand to lose the most. They also worry that funding cuts mired in legal challenges could discourage would-be scientists from entering the field, reducing the chances for medical breakthroughs.
“I would have thought that stroke and Alzheimer’s disease and all these conditions affect Democrats and Republicans alike and would be supported by everyone,” Saver said. “The reasons for the suspension don’t seem to tie into t …