ISTOCK, LUCIDOLOGYPresident Donald Trump unveiled details of his latest 2018 budget proposal today (May 23), and the scientific community—while not entirely surprised—was frustrated by what it read. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) would receive $25.9 billion, a more than $7 billion drop from 2017 funding. The NIH’s Fogarty International Center, which focuses on developing countries, would be eliminated, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality would be folded into other NIH programs.
“The Budget eliminates programs that are duplicative or have limited impact on public health and well-being,” according to the document, entitled America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again.
Researchers and science advocates had a different take. “It is a devastating budget, there’s no way around it,” Benjamin Corb, the director of public affairs at the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, told The Scientist. “A 22 percent cut to the NIH makes it a near impossibility for the NIH to even fund a new research grant in the next fiscal year.”
“The president’s proposed FY18 budget is an imbalanced, heavy-handed approach to bolstering national defense at the expense of other American priorities, including the research and innovation crucial to national security,” ...
