A surge of grant cancellations hit researchers focused on the health of gay, lesbian and transgender people last week, as the Trump administration continues to target what it describes as ideologically driven science. <\/p>\n
Last week the U.S. government terminated at least 68 grants to 46 institutions totaling nearly $40 million when awarded, according to a government website. Some of the grant money has already been spent, but at least $1.36 million in future support was yanked as a result of the cuts, a significant undercount because estimates were available for less than a third of grants. <\/p>\n
Most were in some way related to sexual minorities, including research focused on HIV prevention. Other canceled studies centered on cancer, youth suicide and bone health. <\/p>\n
Health and Human Services spokesman Andrew Nixon said the agency is \u201cdedicated to restoring our agencies to their tradition of upholding gold-standard, evidence-based science.\u201d The grants were awarded by the National Institutes of Health, an agency under HHS. <\/p>\n
One canceled project at Vanderbilt University had been following the overall health of more than 1,200 LGBTQ people age 50 and older. Most of the money has been spent from the grant funding the project, but it was up for renewal in April, said Tara McKay, who leads Vanderbilt\u2019s LGBTQ+ Policy Lab. <\/p>\n
She said the grant won\u2019t be renewed because of the termination, which jeopardizes any long-term results. Still, the Vanderbilt project had already generated two dozen published papers, including work used to train doctors to provide better care to LGBTQ people, increasing the likelihood of cancer screenings and other preventive care. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat saves us a lot of money in health care and saves lives,\u201d McKay said. <\/p>\n
Insights from minority populations can increase knowledge that affects everyone, said Simon Rosser, who studies cancer in gay and bisexual men at the University of Minnesota. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe now no longer have anywhere studying LGBT cancer in the United States,\u201d said Rosser, who saw his grants canceled on Friday. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you decide to cancel all the grants on sexual minorities, you really slow down scientific discovery, for everyone,\u201d Rosser said. Young researchers will lose their jobs, and the field as a whole will suffer, he added. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a loss of a whole generation of science,\u201d Rosser said. <\/p>\n
Termination letters seen by The Associated Press gave as reasons that the research was \u201cunscientific\u201d or did \u201cnothing to enhance the health of many Americans.\u201d <\/p>\n
That language felt personal and stinging, McKay said. <\/p>\n
\u201cMy project\u2019s been accused of having no benefit to the American people. And, you know, queer and trans folks are Americans also,\u201d McKay said. <\/p>\n
Associated Press data journalist Kasturi Pananjady contributed to this report.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n A surge of grant cancellations hit researchers focused on the health of gay, lesbian and transgender people last week, as the Trump administration continues to target what it describes as ideologically driven science. Last week the U.S. government terminated at least 68 grants to 46 institutions totaling nearly $40 million when awarded, according to a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2138,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"loftocean_post_primary_category":0,"loftocean_post_format_gallery":"","loftocean_post_format_gallery_ids":"","loftocean_post_format_gallery_urls":"","loftocean_post_format_video_id":0,"loftocean_post_format_video_url":"","loftocean_post_format_video_type":"","loftocean_post_format_video":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_type":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_url":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_id":0,"loftocean_post_format_audio":"","loftocean-featured-post":"","loftocean-like-count":0,"loftocean-view-count":513,"tinysalt_single_post_intro_label":"","tinysalt_single_post_intro_description":"","tinysalt_hide_post_featured_image":"","tinysalt_post_featured_media_position":"","tinysalt_single_site_header_source":"","tinysalt_single_custom_site_header":"0","tinysalt_single_custom_sticky_site_header":"0","tinysalt_single_custom_sticky_site_header_style":"sticky-scroll-up","tinysalt_single_site_footer_source":"","tinysalt_single_custom_site_footer":"0","footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}