Iowa leaders must oppose research cuts

If President Donald Trump wants to blow up American science, once a beacon for the world, he’s making a lot of progress.

The Gazette’s Vanessa Miller reported earlier this month that billions of dollars in funding from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation for research projects have been terminated.

The cuts are affecting Iowa’s state universities. Although the University of Iowa won’t provide the details, it’s clear that reports from the Department of Health and Human Services and the NSF show that UI has lost millions of dollars in research funding.

Cuts pose an “existential threat” to academic medicine that will have repercussions for patient care, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. In a rural state already wanting to retain more health care experts, these are proposals we cannot support.

Federal research funding terminations have also hit Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa.

Cuts on the horizon could exacerbate knowledge and economic losses in ways that would take generations to overcome. Fewer federal research dollars will make it harder for the United States to lead in innovation, science progressions and collaborations. Scientists are leaving the U.S. to do research in other countries.

It’s also clear that terminated research projects were not chosen at random. Miller reports that the research topics most affected by NIH cuts mention LGBTQ people, racial or ethnic communities, women and low-income populations.

And NSF grants to ISU were terminated for its research as part of a “National Alliance for Inclusive and Diverse STEM Faculty,” along with a half-million-dollar award for an ISU project titled, “Social justice training in graduate engineering education through critical civic engagement.”

Seven NSF-terminated grants to UI and ISU were for research that referenced minority groups and words such as diverse, underrepresented, Indigenous, women and Latinx.

“A very nice nursing project here done at the University of Iowa was going to look at mental health throughout the state, specifically in rural communities,” UI professor of surgery and radiation oncology Joseph Cullen told Miller.

“And in their abstract, the short summary of what they're doing, they use the word diversity. And it was refused even to be looked at. It would have been huge for the university. It would have been huge for the state of Iowa … and it was not even looked at because it had the word diversity,” he said.

Turns out diversity was referring to diverse areas of mental health.

Judging scientific research through the lens of the administration’s crusade against LGBTQ Americans, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs, and its general distrust of any research that doesn’t match its viewpoint is reckless, shortsighted and destructive. In the case of medical research, clinical trials are matters of life and death.

However, we have not heard Gov. Kim Reynolds or our Republican congressional delegation take any public stand against cuts that scuttle important science and harm their constituents. Their fear of political retribution from Trump should not matter.

Protect Iowa’s future and support our state’s universities. Find some political courage before it’s too late.

(319) 398-8362; editorial@thegazette.com