LOS ANGELES (KABC) — Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency claims to have pulled $109 million in federal grants from UCLA.
The now canceled grants were originally given by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The news has shaken the scientific community on campus.
One UCLA scientist talked about the impact the massive cuts will have on the future of medical research.
After a decade of laying down the scientific groundwork, UCLA professor of epidemiology and infectious diseases, Dr. Pamina Gorbach, was launching an ambitious project. The National Institutes of Health awarded her a five-year, $3 million grant to find solutions for one of the most vulnerable groups of patients.
“This program was helping to keep people living with HIV healthier, out of the emergency rooms and off the streets,” she told Eyewitness News.
On March 20, her birthday, Gorbach got a notice canceling her funding and ordering her to cease her work with her community partner, the Los Angeles LGBT Center.
She said the letter implied her study was unscientific. It said the research provided a “low return on investment” and ultimately did “not enhance health, lengthen life or reduce illness.”
“It’s kind of insulting. We are scientists. It was reviewed by a panel of scientists who also agreed that this was meritorious,” Gorbach said.
It went on to categorize her work as a diversity, equity and inclusion study that are “often used to support unlawful discrimination on the basis of race” which “harms the health of Americans.”
“My research was about racial inequity in HIV and substance abuse and that was targeted,” she said.
Gorbach and her other principal investigators are in the process of laying off employees and canceling care for more than 200 participants who have relied on her to stay healthy.
“If people living with HIV do not get the care they need and stay on their medications, they develop AIDS and they die,” said Gorbach.
The only recourse she and her colleagues have are to file for an appeal, but she admits this is new territory.
“Lives will get lost. Life will be worse for lots of people if we don’t keep doing what we’re doing,” she said. “So we have to find a way.”
Even if Gorbach’s is successful in her appeal, the disruption could set her team back for years. She said at UCLA, the atmosphere is filled with tension as colleagues fear their own grants could also be on the Trump administration’s target list.
