Overview
- Funding ceased between late February and mid-August for 383 NIH-supported trials, affecting more than 74,000 people enrolled across major disease areas.
- Prevention and infectious-disease studies and trials conducted outside the United States were hit hardest, with the largest cluster of terminated projects in the U.S. Northeast.
- Participants faced delayed or never-launched studies, lost access to medications, unmonitored implanted devices, and a risk that completed results may never be published.
- A companion editorial called the terminations scientifically unjustifiable and ethically unsound, warning of squandered public funds and damage to trust in research.
- Independent tracker Grant Witness reports 5,464 NIH projects as impacted with about $2.3 billion in losses, notes contradictory federal records and funding freezes, and says no new terminations have been logged since the Oct. 1 shutdown.