Harvard scientists warn against lost breakthroughs after Trump Admin freezes $ 2.6 billion in research grants

Alberto Ascherio’s research at Harvard University is literally frozen. The epidemiology and nutritional scientist were collected from millions of American soldiers over two decades with millions of dollars of taxpayers. The samples are the key to his award -winning research, which wants a cure for multiple sclerosis and other neurodegenerative diseases. But Ascherio could not work with the samples for months because he lost $ 7 million to federal research funding, an accident of Harvard’s struggle with the Trump administration. “It’s as if we created a modern telescope to explore the universe, and now we have no money to launch it,” Ascherio said. “We’ve built everything and now we’re ready to use it to make a new discovery that can affect millions of people in the world, and then,” poof. You are cut off. ” Researchers who have been discharged have losed an estimated $ 2.6 billion to federal financing at Harvard that some of the world’s most prominent researchers dismiss young researchers. It is years or even decades of research, to everything from opioid addiction to cancer. And despite Harvard’s lawsuits against the administration, and settlement discussions between the warring parties, researchers are confronting the fact that some of their work can never resume. The cutting of the financing forms part of a months -long struggle that has waged the Trump administration against some of the country’s top universities, including Columbia, Brown and North West. The administration took a very aggressive attitude against Harvard, and frozen the financing after the country’s oldest university rejected a series of government requirements issued by a Federal Antisemitism Task Force. The government claimed a quick changes related to campus marches, academics and admission-intended to address the government’s accusations that the university had become an incubator of liberalism and tolerated anti-Jewish harassment. Research is in jeopardy, even if the lawsuit prevailed that Harvard replied by filing a federal lawsuit and accusing the Trump administration of conducting a retaliation campaign against the university. In the lawsuit, it set out reforms that he did to address anti -Semitism, but also promised not to surrender its independence or give up its constitutional rights. “” Make no mistake: Harvard rejects anti -Semitism and discrimination in all its forms and actively makes structural reforms to eradicate anti -Semitism on campus, “the university said in its legal complaint.” did not. ‘ The Trump administration denies that the cuts were done in retaliation, saying the grants were revised even before the claims were sent in April. Nothing to do with them. Compilation to pay his researchers’ salaries until next June. Center in Harvard, agreed, which had three perennial grants canceled by the Trump administration. Hamad is based on 190 grants, which affects about 130 scientists. John Quackenbush, a professor of calculation biology and bioinformatics at the School of Public Health, has spent the past few months on several fronts. The Freeze of Harvard. -Administration achieves a kind of settlement? The researchers agreed that the financing cuts had little or nothing to do with the battle of the university against anti -Semitism. She is happy to see what she calls ‘politically motivated social science studies’. But Madras, who served in the president’s first term during Trump’s first term, said the holding of scientists’ research funding as a bargaining disc was not meaningful. of the most important pillars of the country. ‘ Quackenbush and other Harvard researchers believe that the cuts are part of a larger attack on science by the Trump administration that jeopardizes the country’s reputation as the global research leader. to get financing, they said.