The Current - Could U.S. cuts to science research be an opportunity for Canada?

Episode Date: March 11, 2025

U.S. President Donald Trump has slashed and frozen funding to the National Institutes of Health, stalling research on ailments from cancer to dementia and possible new drugs to treat them. We look at the impact on research in Canada, and hear why some say this is an opportunity to attract talent to laboratories here. 

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This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current Podcast. It feels just very defeating to not have a path forward. Elizabeth is a researcher in the United States whose work focuses on brain injuries in infants. The funding for her work comes from the National Institutes of Health, America's medical research agency. The Trump administration has slashed funding to the NIH, freezing grants and

laying off about 1200 employees. We're only using Elizabeth's first name because she worries that speaking out could limit future work in her field. And she says the NIH is one of the few funders of neonatal research. And without that funding, families are left with few options. Clinically, I meet a lot of parents who have

babies who have brain injuries and, you know, I had offered hope of creating new directions and connecting them with research partners. And in the absence of that funding that really falls apart, there is no future direction or research partners. Elizabeth says she's ready to leave the United States, possibly for Canada to continue that research. And in a moment, we'll talk more about the implications for this country and the potential

opportunity here as well. But first, the cuts to the NIH have put the work of thousands of scientists in the United States on hold. Vaughn Cooper is a microbiologist at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Vaughn, good morning. Good morning. Thank you for having me. Thanks for being here. We'll get to your work in a moment. Just for Canadians though, who may not understand this, can you just explain what the National Institutes of Health does? It's an enormous engine of basic and applied research

led by the federal government within the Department of Health and Human Services at the federal level. So ultimately, the NIH now is reporting to newly appointed RFK Jr. What it does is fund a broad range of research aimed at improving the health of Americans and people around the globe through fundamental research and applied research that is really about improving practice in the clinic. It's the world's largest funder of biomedical research, is that right? It is absolutely the world's largest.

It's been the leading engine of really biomedical research innovation for the last 50 years. And so where are you at right now? I mean, the language that's being used is Elon Musk and Donald Trump have approached departments of the federal government with a hacksaw or chainsaw, you know, choose the tool that you want.

But where do things stand for you right now? I mean, for me, we're still doing our best to maintain business as usual. However, many United States institutions are implementing hiring freezes and slowing the operations of their research and applications in fear of forthcoming cuts. And a big reason is that already the NIH has invested more than a billion dollars less than it had to this date in 2024. And that's largely because of a variety of outright and then

backroom funding freezes so that money is just simply not getting to the institutions that are doing this work. There are federal judges in the United States that have blocked the Trump administration's funding freezes for the NIH, but in the face of that, there are some researchers who've called this, in their words, an apocalypse for science.

What does that mean from your perspective? Well, I mean, I think the apocalypse would be if the money really doesn't come. One major reason why it hasn't come yet is that in addition to the freeze, which as you say was blocked at the federal legal level, there's also been these sort of backroom methods that have prevented the awarding of new funding.

So one of my projects that is a collaboration with somebody just across the border in Buffalo aimed at helping people who have long-term catheters to avoid urinary tract infections and better to control them. That project was really on the doorstep of being awarded, but the meeting that must happen to sort of rubber stamp that grant and move it forward to being paid was canceled. And it's on the docket for another round in the coming months, but that is also dependent on the fact the federal government remains open for business, which is yet another political football. So in terms of the the apocalypse question if the money stops then sadly

Researchers like myself will have to downsize our groups and and other Laboratories may in fact close many Trials that are ongoing to to help critically Needy patients will stop some of that is already happening So that's the, that's the apocalypse that people are concerned about. I mean, the head of a cancer center at St. Jude's children research hospital said, because of the

experimental trials, perhaps that may not be happening, the things that are being slowed down. Um, this researcher said very bluntly, more children will die because of what's going on right now. That's again, the language is really strong, but that's not the case. And so, um, more children will die because of what's going on right now. That again, the language is really strong, but do you think that that language

fits the moment? I'm afraid it does fit the moment because just last night, R.F.K. Jr. and other and spokespeople working for him said that they would be ceasing any research involving mRNA vaccines. And although many of us know that mRNA vaccines indeed helped save the world in the last pandemic, these are just an unbelievable revelation in treatment, an incredible innovation. Perhaps one of their most exciting new uses is to help vaccinate against cancers. These are really incredible new therapeutics that are, again,

right on the doorstep of being deployed more broadly and are being used in many ongoing late stage clinical trials. And those trials are now being a threat of being canceled. How do you understand that? How do you understand what's happening in your country right now when it comes to science and research? I mean, this is pretty clearly a personal reaction against the people who the former,

the Trump one administration blamed for them losing political power related to the pandemic. And so by targeting today's researchers working on that same technology, they are saying, it was your fault and we're going to sort of take it out on you. Which of course, the pandemic was really nobody's fault. It arose out of natural origin and this new technology was used to generate vaccines to help protect people quite successfully.

But those people are now being made examples of, and anyone else using those technologies are being made examples of to, as an emblem of maybe the problem of elite science. Now I wanna say that we're not- What's the message for the next generation of scientists? You're involved in this project looking at young people who wanna get into science.

What is the message to them? Yeah, so I appreciate that question very much. I think that question is quite alarming. It really has a chilling effect on our hopes of recruiting the next generation of scientists. So I'm delighted that I have a project supported by the NIH that is aimed at improving students' attitudes toward science, to help them see themselves as future scientists, whatever kind of scientists or engineers that they might want to be. And we're delighted for that support. It supports students from greater Pittsburgh, but also students from rural areas around the city and around the country. That program is ongoing in my lab, but the announcement for that program for future years has been removed from the NIH website. So this means that new applications can't happen. And if that program went away, uh, we and many

other programs like ours would lose support for literally many thousands of students and teachers that we support every year. Just before I let you go, we heard earlier from Elizabeth, her research has also been impacted and she's been applying for jobs at hospitals here in Canada so she can continue that work.

Have a listen to her. Canada is a lovely country and it, I think, presents a lot of really lovely opportunities, both in a research framework, as well as with the social infrastructure that exists. But it is really, it's kind of scary to think that I would have to take my entire family out of our country that it's the only place I've ever lived

and transition that to a very different way of life with questionable future citizenship possibilities depending upon the climate. I mean, that's really, it's dire. Vaughn, it's a bit of a joke when people don't like the result of an election. They say, I'm moving to Canada. But I just wonder just briefly,

what are the conversations you're having with other people in your field, about whether people would leave the United States in the face of what's going on right now? Certainly those conversations are happening in the hallway and they're happening much more actively among the students who are applying to graduate programs to launch their new careers in research.

Given that the number of slots is now on the way in here applying to graduate programs to launch their new careers in research. Given that the number of slots is now on the way in here for new students in the United States, the opportunities in other countries, including Canada, are all the more attractive. And then for those of us who are leading research labs, you know, we all enjoy visiting our colleagues in Canada and admire the collegiality and sense of community. I just gave a seminar at the University of Toronto and loved every minute of it, loved every minute of my visit.

It's quite tempting. On the other hand, the resources that we've enjoyed over the last many decades here in the United States are unparalleled and we really hope we can maintain them. I hope you're right. Vaughn, it's good to speak with you about this. I appreciate you talking about it.

Thank you. about it. Thank you. Thank you. Von Cooper is a microbiologist at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. I'm Nicola Coughlin, and this is history's youngest heroes, Terry Fox's Marathon of Hope. I think of home a lot.

I think of running into Vancouver and running into where I'm gonna finish on the ocean. And all you gotta do is take another step and keep on going. He planned to run 5,300 miles across the second largest country in the world. Makes you believe in the human race again. Join me, Nicola Coughlin, for history's youngest heroes wherever you get your podcasts. Those NIH funding cuts in the United States are also impacting Canadian research. Vincent Poitou is a director of research and innovation at the Centre Hospitalité de l'Université de Montréal. We have several scientists who receive NIH funding either directly from NIH as principal

investigators or in the form of a collaboration. I myself, I'm a scientist. I have a collaboration with a prof at the University of California, Davis. The University of California, Davis administers the grant, but then we have what's called a subcontract or a subaward whereby money comes to us for the cost of the research that is done in my lab in Montreal in the context of this collaboration. Vincent researches diabetes, specifically the production of insulin, and his collaboration's future funding is now in question, as are many other NIH-funded projects across Canada. He hopes that new partnerships outside of the United States can make up that funding

gap, but until then, he's worried about what the future holds for Canadian medical science. I've been doing research for 25 years. I've never seen anything like this, and we have to remember, right, it's not just a bunch of scientists complaining in their labs.

We're talking about people's lives. We're talking about treatments. We're talking about access to we're talking about access to clinical trials that give patients hope for a better treatment and I really hope that the consequences are not as dire as I fear they will be. While universities struggle to figure out what to do, there are some who are arguing that this could actually be an opportunity for Canada. Richard Gold is one of them. He's director of McGill University's

Centre for Intellectual Property Policy. Also the chief policy and partnerships officer at Conscience, a Canadian nonprofit supporting open science drug discovery. He's in our Ottawa studio this morning. Richard, good morning to you. Good morning, Matt. I was reading something last night talking

about the importance of research funded by the federal government in the United States. And the suggestion was it has found a place in many of the defining technologies of our time. The internet, artificial intelligence, CRISPR, Ozempic, the mRNA vaccines that of course were so important to people five years ago in the pandemic. How intertwined is Canadian scientific research

with the research that's done in the US? They're very intertwined. Science is an international effort. So Canadian scientists collaborate not only with each other, but with our American colleagues or European colleagues. But as you mentioned when you were talking with Vaughn, the big elephant is the NIH. They support a lot of the research including Canadian researchers as Vincent said he was supported. And so without the NIH there, we're all trying to find money,

alternative money sources. And there's some in Canada, but we've lost ground over the last 25 years. So while the absolute dollar amount has gone up when you take into account inflation, we've actually lost ground in research. And so there's no way to make up for the loss of the NIH. All we can do is do the best we can and struggle on. Trevor Burrus One of the things that you have said we should do, we in Canada should do in the face of what's happening in the United States is, in your words, take advantage of Trump's denigration of science.

You wrote a piece for the Globe and Mail. I know you don't write the headlines, but the headline was that there can be smart investments in stupid times. What should we be doing? What should we be thinking about here? Well, what we need to think about is, given this loss, how do we make the best out of the lemons? How do we

make some degree of lemonade? And there are two aspects of this. One is how do we grow our own innovation economy? And those who are watching Carney speak about investing in the future, this is exactly what that would be. That is, making sure universities have funding to be able to hire all these people who are now interested in coming here, but also funding their labs, which is incredibly expensive, and then do the work of doing the research. So we have an opportunity here, but it would require the federal government in terms of grants and visas, but also provincial governments that have been cutting back on university funding to create the spots so

that these people can come. So one aspect is just getting those people here because we know that every dollar spent on research comes back into the economy six to 11 times. So this is a great investment in the future and it would also increase our independence. There is the opportunity, I mean poaching is the word that people use, there is the opportunity to poach those who might find themselves out of work or in a situation where they don't want to continue working there? I think so. I'm hearing lots of interest. My dean, I was just talking to my dean over the weekend

and she was saying that she's getting approached in my area of law. So it's not just science. I heard from a university and hospital CEO who said the same thing, getting calls multiple times a day from people who want to come here. Yeah, they want to come here. They may go back in the end, but just think about all the people they will train who will stay in Canada and contribute to our economy. They'll also bring all that data. Imagine you were a patient dying of some rare cancer and you donated your tissues knowing that that would help someone else not get that cancer. Think about the hope that their families have.

Well, if that research is stopped, all that work, all that donation comes to nothing. So we need to preserve the science. It's not only going forward that we could lose, but if you stop funding midstream, you're losing a lot of knowledge. And so if we can bring that knowledge to Canada and preserve it, not only for us, but for the world, that would be a good thing. Pete Huston Vaughn talked about how in the United States, he has considered in the idea of coming here as attractive, but also that they have had the resources that would want,

that would ensure that he stays in the US. What do we need to do? What kind of investments do you need to attract those people here? We would need massive investments. Our universities have been underfunded for decades. We don't have the equipment that the US have. My own cousin was taught, sorry, was trained at Miguel and had to go to the United States in order to get a lab that was up to date with all the equipment. So we have a major path to follow to get to the point where our labs have that equipment. So it's not just reversing the cuts in funding. It's actually you require more funding for those these universities. Yeah, there's some basement laboratories at McGill that have asbestos in terrible condition.

I mean, we've just been so underfunding our universities, the infrastructure, the labs, that it will take massive amounts of money. The question is, are we willing to do it? We know the payback is there, but is the payback in four years? Probably not. It's a longer-term investment. Pete Slauson Elizabeth was also unsure about how easy it would be to get Canadian citizenship. You've said that this is possible under existing legislation to bring people here. Pete Slauson Yeah, there are visa streams that currently exist and it's just up to the ministry to open them up to these visitors.

It would not require legislative change. So I don't think that's the hard part. The hard part is ensuring that these people have jobs. We don't want to give visas to scientists just to sit around and, you know, do something, do nothing. So we have to ensure that the jobs are there, but the visa part is not difficult. You also have to ensure that people have places to live, that I mean, people are coming here for work, but they also have to live.

We're in the midst of a housing crisis right now. Does that factor into this? Marginally, we're not talking about enough people to really upset the apple cart there. This is not a massive program. I don't expect we're going to get hundreds of thousands of researchers coming into Canada. So I'm conscious of that problem, but I don't think it's major in this particular case. Is there a role for the private sector here? Sure. Because to get that equipment,

we could use co-funding. Also, in terms of the research itself, we know the best research is research when university researchers work with firms. They're much more productive, especially on the health side. They're much more likely to come up with a drug that works than something that doesn't. So co-funding by the private sector would be great, but we

in Canada have a problem there. The private sector hasn't been investing in innovation, especially the big firms, and so that is also a drug. We have a bunch of historical problems and just throwing money at it's not going to fix it, but it is a start and there is this sense that this is Canada's moment and if we can rally the troops and say, look, if we wanna be economically independent and we wanna be rich, the best way is through innovation. And that means investing in our researchers, but also encouraging our firms to invest in research.

Just before I let you go, is your sense in this moment, in the Canada's moment that governments are willing to do this? We've talked on this program about how governments have underfunded universities and colleges because it's not, it's not seen as they're trying to figure out how to cut up that pie. It's not seen in some ways, perhaps as politically expedient.

It's not seen as something that is going to gather votes, but you've said that innovation drives the modern economy. So is it, can you square that? It's hard. It just that it takes, the investments today take years to pay off. But I think we are at a moment where we can argue that strategic investment would work. But frankly, the Ontario government and Quebec governments are two

largest provinces, have to radically change course and start investing. And there, I don't know, neither one of them has made noises that would suggest they're willing to do that. There's a lot at stake for all of us, isn't there? I mean, again, it's back to those rare diseases. It's also that list of things that I said were funded by government research in many ways. We're all at play here.

Yeah. I mean, Geoffrey Hinton, when he first got his grant to do, you know, what has become AI was thought of as strange and weird. Imagine if he didn't get that grant. Imagine if, you know, the Nobel, if you look at the Nobel prizes this year and last, we have Alpha Fold. Well, Alpha Fold is based on an open set of data of the structures of proteins, which are the targets for drug discovery. Imagine that hadn't been funded by the public. We wouldn't have Alpha Fold and the next generation of drug discovery.

We wouldn't have had our mRNA vaccines. Once you start thinking about this and the consequences of not going forward, losing a generation of scientists, it's scary. Richard, thank you for this. Thank you, Matt. Richard Gold, Director of McGill University's Center for Intellectual Property Policy and Chief Policy and Partnerships Officer at Conscience, a Canadian nonprofit supporting open science drug discovery.

He was in our studio in Ottawa.