The White House’s proposed $5.8 billion cut to the National Institutes of Health would be “devastating to the American people” and a “dramatic setback to medical progress.”
Those are some of the assessments proffered about the preliminary budget released earlier this year by the administration of President Donald J. Trump. A more detailed budget is expected in the coming weeks.
One of the fiercest opponents of the proposed $5.8 billion cut to NIH — which would take the federal agency’s spending down to $25.9 billion — is Grinnell College president Dr. Raynard S. Kington, former acting director of NIH under President George W. Bush and President Barack H. Obama.
Kington said the proposed cuts to NIH “suggest an extraordinary level of ignorance about the important new knowledge and innovation that comes out of that funding.”
“I think it would be devastating to the American people to implement the cuts that are being proposed,” Kington said. “I just think the proposals are short-sighted, they are anti-knowledge, anti-intellectual, and they just would be extraordinarily bad for the future and well-being of our country.”
Kington cited the need for a “whole continuum” of research in order to make new medical breakthroughs on things that range from childhood leukemia to obesity. He said the private sector is “never going to do the basic research in a way that a developed society needs.”
Kington is by no means the lone critic of the proposed cuts to NIH.
