Recent budget cuts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have dominated the headlines since February of this year, when the NIH announced a 15 percent cap on indirect costs — a move that jeopardizes essential research infrastructure by slashing funding for facilities and administrative support vital to the advancement of scientific innovation.
Now, leaked documents threaten to compound this issue: The Trump administration plans to cut the NIH’s budget by $20 billion, nearly 40 percent of its total budget. If implemented, this harmful decision will have a disastrous impact on millions of Americans, especially our nation’s aging population.
And the numbers don’t lie. The Alzheimer’s Association reports that an estimated ~7 million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), 73 percent of whom are over 75 years of age. Alarmingly, this number is expected to almost double by 2050 if treatments are not created to delay the onset of this devastating disease.
Time is running out. If we do not take direct action to combat the real-world impact of these cuts, millions of Americans — of all political stripes — will suffer. And as someone who has cared for a loved one with Alzheimer’s, I can attest to the emotional and financial toll it takes on families and caregivers — a burden that, if ignored, will cause even more stress to the American people and to our broader health care system.
According to Dr. Jim Brewer, head of the NIH-funded neuroscience department and chair of the Department of Neurosciences at UC San Diego School of Medicine, 14 of the 35 Alzheimer’s Disease Research Centers (ADRCs) in the U.S. will run out of funding by April 30 due to budget cuts. As a result, they will not be able to continue their research. A lawsuit from the University of Washington and other universities states that funding cuts would amount to a $90–110 million loss for the university and require ongoing clinical trials for various diseases to be scaled back, including studies examining how air pollution impacts AD.
Even more concerning, the same lawsuit also includes concerns raised by the University of Massachusetts. Funding is already delayed for a project that could identify a gene critical to treating AD and even other debilitating neurodegenerative diseases.
With the minds of millions of Americans at stake, many on Capitol Hill agree that urgently restoring the NIH’s capacity to pursue a cure for AD must be a bipartisan priority. Despite these concerns largely falling on deaf ears within the Trump administration, some Republican lawmakers see how vital research on AD is.
In May 2024, Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) told the former NIH director that “Alzheimer’s and dementia-related research must remain a national priority.” Also in 2024, Senators Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) successfully urged President Biden to sign into law the reauthorization of both the Alzheimer’s Accountability and Investment Act (AAIA) and the National Alzheimer’s Project Act (NAPA), which reaffirmed the nation’s commitment to fighting Alzheimer’s with real funding and accountability.
Today’s budget cuts threaten the effectiveness of these acts. In a February interview with the Press Herald, Senator Collins announced that she was “adamantly opposed to this arbitrary cap on indirect costs.” Senator Capito’s response to the cuts has been less prominent. Speaking to the Washington Post in February, she said in response to Trump’s budget cuts: “It’s pretty drastic. So I’m thinking we need to look at this.”
By thwarting scientific advancement, the U.S. risks losing its status as the global leader in medical research — an achievement in which experts like Yale’s Dr. Harlan Krumholz take great pride in.
Ultimately, restoring the NIH’s full budget is not about politics at all. It is an American imperative. By uniting behind research, the scientific community can safeguard the 14 ADRCs at risk, keep critical clinical trials running, and honor the bipartisan momentum behind AAIA and NAPA.
Congress must act now: Curing Alzheimer’s demands urgency, resources, and resolve from both sides of the aisle. The choices we make today will shape the lives of millions tomorrow.
Tamer Hage, Tejas Sekhar, and Swapna Vaja are medical students.
