MaineHealth's federal grant cut off over previous research on vaccine hesitancy
Apr. 7—The Trump administration is cutting part of a five-year research grant awarded to MaineHealth because the grant funded a vaccine hesitancy survey four years ago.
Dr. Clifford Rosen, a senior scientist at the MaineHealth Institute for Research, said the National Institutes of Health axed about $500,000 of a five-year, $1.25 million grant this month. The grant is part of the Pilot Project Program to support a variety of research by young scientists, including the 2021 vaccine study.
Documents filed with Rosen explaining why the funds were being cut said that "it is the policy of NIH not to prioritize research that focuses on gaining scientific knowledge on why individuals are hesitant to be vaccinated and/or explore ways to improve vaccine interest and commitment."
"The reason they gave had nothing to do with what we are doing now," Rosen said.
The cut comes as laboratories and researchers in Maine and nationwide are nervous about ongoing federal funding and future support for medical research and other scientific studies.
Rosen said the cut is an example of how the entire NIH is being politicized. "The system we have has worked for 60-70 years, and now it's under siege."
The political motivations are counter to sound science, Rosen said, and it's important to know the reasons why people refuse vaccines.
"It's a great idea to understand and learn what's going on," Rosen said. "But there's tremendous backlash against vaccines."
The NIH is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which is now led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kennedy is a longtime critic of vaccines who has spread misinformation about their safety and efficacy, including the false claim that they cause autism.
The study cited by the NIH as the reason for cutting off funding had focused on the role of misinformation in COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. Rosen said research included a survey asking why some people in rural Maine were hesitant about getting their immunizations.
In addition to reviewing and cutting outside research grants, Kennedy's HHS is cutting public health funding provided to states and slashing the agency's workforce, including the NIH, by about 25%.
The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention is laying off at least 40 subcontracted workers after losing $91 million in federal public health funding. Officials said the cut would reduce capacity in some public health services, including vaccine distribution, infectious disease tracking and outbreak management. Maine has joined a multi-state lawsuit to reverse those cuts.
Andrew Nixon, U.S. DHHS spokesperson, said in a written statement about the public health cuts that the "pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a nonexistent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago."
NIH grants nationwide are being canceled because they do not align with the Trump administration's priorities, such as dismantling programs or initiatives that promote diversity, equity and inclusion. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit this week in Massachusetts, in an attempt to reverse NIH canceling $1.1 billion in grants in an "ideological purge," arguing the cancellations were not based on valid scientific reasoning.
The Trump administration is also fighting a separate lawsuit over its initiative to cap the indirect costs in NIH grants at 15%. Many research grants have much higher indirect costs, which are costs for overhead like purchasing and maintaining technical equipment. The indirect costs lawsuit is pending in court.
The Pilot Project Program is part of a $20 million collaboration between MaineHealth, University of Vermont and the University of New England to boost research in northern New England. Rosen said the PPP grants $50,000 in seed research to young professionals to research many topics, such as chronic pain.
"You cut off young investigators, ideas dry up," Rosen said. "It impedes the progress of science."
Griffin Scott Tibbitts, 25, a doctoral student at Northeastern University's Roux Institute in Portland, said he's not experiencing any threats to current research projects, but he worries that the Trump administration is having a chilling effect on research.
The structure of many research programs at universities relies on NIH grants, Tibbitts said.
Tibbitts is studying computational and mathematical models of animals that use regeneration, like salamanders. The research centers on how regenerative cells are different than non-regenerative human cells.
"If you cut off the source of new ideas, it chokes off basic research from these institutions, and slows the innovative companies and clinical advances that would arise from them," Tibbitts said. "It could slow progress we are making with diseases, cancers, Alzheimer's."
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