Health
White House takes eye off the prize by withdrawing support for medical research
As 2025’s Nobel winners are honored this week, 2009 laureate Carol Greider reasserts the vital role of federal funding in fueling future prize-worthy breakthroughs in health and science
Carol Greider, professor of molecular, cell, and developmental biology (photo by Carolyn Lagatutta)
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When this year’s Nobel Prizes are presented on December 10, it will prompt a mix of sentiments for UC Santa Cruz cell biology professor Carol Greider. As a Nobel laureate herself, the date brings her back to 2009 when she accepted the prize in physiology or medicine in person with two colleagues responsible for discovering how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase.
But that special memory is tempered by the deep distress felt by many about the threats of drastic cuts in federal funding for scientific research and programs, and the political pressure being applied to academic institutions around the country—particularly the University of California—where these breakthroughs are made.
Greider is a product of the UC system: Her father was a physics professor at UC Davis; and she earned her undergraduate degree at UC Santa Barbara, and her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley. A professor of molecular, cell, and developmental biology at UC Santa Cruz since 2020, Greider continues to advance her research and stand for what she thinks is right and best for this country.
One thing she vehemently disagrees with is the current White House administration’s adversarial stance toward federal agencies like the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Environmental Protection Agency, and leading research institutions like UC, Columbia, Cornell, and Harvard. In the first months of 2025, as the administration announced severe cuts in federal funding, Greider joined other top U.S. scientists in voicing opposition.
She was an author of a commentary published in June by U.S. News & World Reports titled, “Wake Up, America. Cutting Health and Science Funding Costs Lives.” They called out a White House plan at the time to cut $18 billion—or 40%—from the NIH’s budget, as well as decrying the administration’s moves to terminate 2,100 research grants totaling $9.5 billion.
Greider and her co-authors summed up their outrage by quoting a comment Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) made to Trump-appointed NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya when he testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee about the 2026 NIH budget at the time. ““For God’s sake, we lead the world in medical research,” Durbin said. “Why would we give up on it?”
In their piece, they warned that the administration’s slash-and-burn approach to cutting “government waste” would hinder vital scientific and medical research that benefits all Americans. They explained how, among them, their research labs have been supported by the NIH over the last 35 years and collectively trained over 150 young scientists who have gone on to make important contributions to science and education in America.
“In other words, the draconian cuts to NIH budgets won’t just hurt scientific progress today, they will have devastating—and potentially irreparable—effects on American science for generations to come,” they wrote.
Greider has also spoken out about local impact, co-authoring a hometown opinion piece with fellow UC Santa Cruz cell-biology professors Needhi Bhalla and Susan Carpenter on how the escalating attacks on research and education are hurting the campus and neighboring community.
In their April 27 piece, they detailed how UC Santa Cruz in the previous four months saw 10 NIH-funded grants terminated, resulting in a total loss of $6 million for research endeavors. Some of those grants, like the one supporting the Initiative for Maximizing Student Development, imperiled a cornerstone of science, technology, engineering and mathematics training at UC Santa Cruz for over half a century—benefiting hundreds of students who have excelled in their graduate schools, medical schools, and other health professions.
“Our research programs, supported by federal investment, are a vital public good that fuels the state’s economic growth, technological innovation and public health and safety,” they concluded. “We are seeing huge losses in this economic and social engine, and it’s possible we won’t appreciate the significance of this until it’s irretrievably lost.”
With the federal government issuing fewer grants in every area of science, our nation is making fewer bets on long-term science—dimming the prospects of future discoveries like the one that earned Greider no less than the most recognized prize in the world.