Biomedical research impacts all of us. I became curious about how drugs work after my mom was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis when I was a small boy. She received “gold shots” as treatment, which didn’t make a lot of sense to me, and, it turns out, didn’t really work very well.

After graduating from Jackson-Milton high school, I attended Hiram College and Stanford Medical School. Since then, I have been doing biomedical research focused on cancer and immunology. When my children were very young, my wife was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive breast cancer. Although she received the most cutting-edge treatment, she passed away at just 40 years old. Finding cures is very personal to me, and I’m writing this op-ed because we are currently facing a disaster from recent government directives to indiscriminately fire thousands of staff, and severely cut funding, at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Up until 2025 the United States was the undisputed world leader in biomedical research. Nearly all of the therapies you know about had discoveries funded by the NIH. These include Wegovy and Ozempic (for diabetes and weight loss), Keytruda, Herceptin, Rituxan (cancer), Humira and Enbrel (autoimmune diseases), and many others. My own laboratory studies antibodies, which are the molecules in our blood that fight infection.

These antibodies can also be engineered in the lab to create drugs that treat cancer without the severe side effects of chemotherapy. When I started medical school there was only one antibody drug available, but now there are over 100. The innovation of antibodies as therapeutics has been one of the greatest achievements in medicine, helping patients with many different conditions. But this “golden age” of biomedical research in America appears to be over.

NIH-funded research is one of the best investments by the federal government, generating $2.50 in the economy for every $1.00 of grant funding. Imagine that you could invest $100, and in a few years have $250, but as a perk you also get access to new cures. It’s a no-brainer investment, right? The NIH budget is less than $50 billion, and this covers all research for all diseases, including cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, heart disease, and many more. That’s a lot of money, but it is only 1% of federal spending, and only one-eighth of the net worth of the country’s richest man, Elon Musk, whose DOGE is behind the dismantling of the NIH.

Think about that. Are the innovations and new therapies worth one penny out of each dollar you pay in taxes? It would be a bargain to modestly increase spending to two cents per tax dollar, accelerating research to make treatments available for you or your loved ones that weren’t there for my late wife. But we are headed in the opposite direction.

The Trump administration and its DOGE are saying that overhead, or “indirect costs” are fraught with “waste, fraud, and abuse” and want to nearly eliminate this funding. I run a nonprofit biomedical research institute that receives NIH grants, and an audit is legally required every year by the federal government, and overhead rates are negotiated with government accountants regularly, to ensure there is no fraud or abuse. I don’t believe the administration. But, what are “indirect costs”? Imagine the operations of your local fire department, which is funded by tax dollars. Let’s say the city council decides to cut the budget and only pay for “direct” costs for fighting a fire. So, they’ll pay for the water in the hose, but not the gas in the truck. They’ll pay the salaries for the firemen, but not for the dispatcher who tells them where to go. They’ll pay for helmets, coats and boots, but won’t pay for the maintenance of the firetrucks, the rent, utilities, or janitor at the fire station.

Now, with these cuts to “fraud and abuse” do you really have a functional fire department? As absurd as this sounds, this is what the government is imposing on cancer and all NIH research. Research institutions won’t be able to keep expensive equipment maintained, or the lights on.

Ohio receives greater than $1B in NIH research funding, supporting over 12,000 jobs. Case Western Reserve and the Cleveland Clinic receive more than $50M. Kent State and Northeast Ohio Medical University are set to receive over $1.5M. The impact of decreasing the overhead alone will be tens of millions of dollars lost to Northeast Ohio and will result in layoffs and the inability to find cures.

Many laboratories will simply shut down. Scientists will leave. I personally know of high-level scientists already being recruited by foreign institutions. A significant impact will be not having access to new medicines.

Global competition in biomedical research is intense, and now, America is losing. Imagine that you are diagnosed with a rare cancer, and the cure exists, but it is only available in China.

Although I lost my wife, my mother still lives in Lake Milton and stopped taking “gold shots” decades ago. She is lucky to have new antibody treatments like Humira and Rituxan for arthritis that were not available when I started medical school. In the direction we are headed, the next generation won’t be so lucky.

Vaughn Smider, M.D., Ph.D. is the president of the Applied Biomedical Science Institute. He can be reached at Vaughn.smider@absinstitute.org.