Guest Author
By Dr Kamal Menghrajani
I grew up in Charlotte and was fortunate to work on the Voice of India radio program and on Nazar Television. I learned so much from my time there, including how to engage and identify what was important and relevant to the community.
I went to college and then medical school at UNC Chapel Hill. I became a doctor and did my internal medicine residency at the University of Michigan, followed by fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. I was a cancer doctor on faculty there for several years.
Later, I was selected by the White House to be the first ever oncologist for the Cancer Moonshot, and to serve as the physician helping with strategy for the Health Outcomes team.
I stayed at the White House for a year and a half, and, during that time, I learned a lot about how the federal agencies work. As I reflect on the recent changes to the federal government, I’ve been processing how the cuts to federal funding and the federal workforce are likely to affect people’s day-to-day lives and wanted to share some of these thoughts.
To start, the impact of cutting funding for scientific research is likely to dramatically affect multiple aspects of American life for decades to come. Around the time of World War II, the US realized that it was important to build in-country capacity to advance science. This was highlighted by advancements in radar, the production of penicillin as an antibiotic, and the creation of the atomic bomb. While these research and development advances had clear applications during wartime, the investment in creating them started an era of US innovation and high-tech entrepreneurship & employment. Early funding of US scientific research led to advances in optics, vaccine development, rockets and propulsion, and other fields.
These advances helped keep Americans alive, provided jobs, and served as an engine for our economy. In the post-war period of the 1940s, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) was formally established, with different components (“institutes” and “centers”) that were focused on the science of cancer, heart disease, etc. NIH set up labs close to D.C. – they built buildings, hired scientists, and created the infrastructure needed to do cutting-edge, world-class research. But they also realized that excellent science could come from anywhere in the country. And instead of only funding research advances from a relatively small pool of people in their own labs, the NIH started providing funding for research done at universities and academic centers across the country.
In fact, NIH now provides about 75% of its budget to fund discovery and innovation across the US.
NIH is the largest funder of biomedical research in the world, and it pays for research in two ways. One, it gives money directly to the researcher to carry out experiments, and two, it gives some money to the institution where the work is being done.
The first pot of money allows researchers to independently pursue their ideas for how to advance their fields. The second pot of money is meant to help cover the cost of rent, electricity, hiring staff to do tasks that are shared among multiple research projects, etc. In this way, NIH funds the research and the creation and maintenance of scientific infrastructure in our country.
We, as a nation, get a lot from this investment. When it comes to new medicines, NIH has funded the basic research that led to the discovery of every single FDA-approved medicine for at least a decade. Additionally, making new treatments is very expensive. NIH provides a little over half of the investment needed to create a new medicine, with the other half invested by pharmaceutical companies. Without NIH investment to show which candidates are promising, pharma would not be able to develop and distribute the medicines that our society relies on.
One often-cited example of how government-funded research has changed American lives was a study on the venom of the Gila monster, a type of lizard. Scientists wanted to understand how the venom worked – and they had the academic freedom to ask this type of question because of government research funding. Well, as it turns out, they discovered the compound that would lead to the creation of Ozempic.
By funding scientists and their ideas, even when they may not seem to have any relevance to human health, NIH has produced countless examples of new understandings and new treatments that can benefit people across the US.
While NIH funding has technically been increasing over the past several years, when adjusted for inflation and the increasing costs of doing science, the value of funding has actually been flat for over two decades. The repercussions of this are that China has started to catch up. In 2023, China surpassed the US for the first time as the global leader in scientific publications. In 2024, of the top 10 research institutions for health science, seven were in China.
In February of 2025, the current administration announced that they wanted to cut NIH funding. They wanted to cap the amount of money they pay institutions for shared infrastructure expenses (keeping the lights on, etc.). They made this announcement without any warning, and without giving universities and research centers any time to change their budgets or economic forecasts. While these proposed cuts are now mired in court, the effect they could have would be devastating. Many institutions stand to lose $100 million or more, which means they will have to close down research programs, sell off expensive scientific infrastructure, or shut their doors altogether.
As an example, the University of Alabama, which is the second largest employer in the state, stands to lose $70 million if the NIH funding cuts go through, which would lead to mass layoffs in Birmingham and beyond.
Cutting funding will destroy the US’s previous global advantage in science and technology.
Now is the time for us to invest more, to engage more in STEM, to advance research that will foster innovation, increase entrepreneurship, and continue to grow the economy. By tearing down the US’s scientific infrastructure, we will only fall further behind – and it could be decades before we are able to rebuild and catch up once again.
Dr Kamal Menghrajani is a Charlotte native and a passionate Tar Heel basketball fan. She is a hematologist and medical oncologist in New York City and was the first oncologist to join the Cancer Moonshot team at The White House. Contact: [email protected].
