Slashing NIH Funding with a Chainsaw Hurts Us All
How cuts have stalled breakthroughs in stroke recovery, brain research, cancer treatment, and many other life-saving medical innovations that begin in university labs.
This is a topic I’m covering in my latest book, and one of the subheadings is tentatively set to read:
‘How cuts have stalled breakthroughs in stroke recovery, brain research, cancer treatment, and many other life-saving medical innovations that begin in university labs.’-from Closure After Stroke Book by David Dansereau
When I was looking for interviews back in April to back some of the points I was covering on the Trump administrations plan to cap indirect costs for National Institutes of Health (NIH) research grants at 15%, I found that deeply concerning and wanted the hard truths from within the research labs.
I reached out to many of the University of Rhode Island (URI) faculty I had been working with for their comments but nobody was willing to go on the record.
I get it, we are all scared. I still plan to finish that chapter especially after reading this recent op-ed.-David Dansereau
I want to call your attention to an op-ed written by University of Rhode Island President Marc Parlange that is well worth your time.
This op-ed was originally published in Science, the peer-reviewed academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) June 12,2025. It was reprinted with permission from AAAS and appears this month in the University of Rhode Island Magazine (page 18) Quad Angles section.
Also here’s a link to the publication as a PDF
“An America Research Crisis With Real World Human Consequences”
-by Marc B. Parlange
If you are an alum like myself and my wife and our oldest son, this op-ed provides a brilliant spotlight on how URI was formed (for working families), and how in President Parlange’s words:
"defunding these universities doesn’t punish a few-it hurts working families, veterans, immigrants, and young people striving for something better”.
As the son of a veteran, hard working mason, and only the second in my family to go to college, URI gave me the opportunity to afford two degrees (nutrition and physical therapy), it also offered me one of the greatest gifts of all (while studying there I met my wife). She also has multiple degrees from URI in nutrition and nursing, and that connection blessed us with three children, one who also recently graduated with a URI degree in computer science and is employed in Rhode Island.
There is a tickle down effect happening right now before our eyes from the current administration ’flooding the zone’ with chaos and cuts, it is indeed ‘devastating, far reaching and yes even irreparable'.
Please give this op-ed a read, share it and please start to speak up!
Thank you President Parlange for being brave enough to do so and include award amounts already lost by URI* with these sweeping cuts, when other institutions are bending the knee, being silenced and paying the bribe.
* $49 million to date
Photo illustration credit Anthony Russo / URI Magazine
