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    Deep Cuts to Medical Research Funds Could Hobble University Budgets

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    The National Institutes of Health announced a new policy Friday to cap a type of funding that supports medical research at universities, a decision that most likely will leave many with a large budget gap. The policy targets $9 billion in so-called indirect funds that the N.I.H. sends along with direct funds to support research into basic science and treatments for diseases ranging from cancer to Alzheimer’s to diabetes.Currently, some universities get 50 percent or more of the amount of a grant in indirect funds, meaning a $1 million research award would come with $500,000 to maintain facilities and equipment and pay support staff. The new policy would cap those indirect funds at 15 percent.“I think it’s going to destroy research universities in the short term, and I don’t know after that,” said Dr. David A. Baltrus, a University of Arizona associate professor whose lab is developing antibiotics for crops. “They rely on the money. They budget for the money. The universities were making decisions expecting the money to be there.”Dr. Baltrus said that his research is focused on efforts such as keeping E. coli bacteria out of crops like sprouts and lettuce. He said the policy change would force his university to make cuts to support staff and overhead.The Trump administration has been sharply critical of what it derides as “woke” policies and cultures at universities, which have been bracing for a hit to their budgets. Project 2025, a set of conservative policy proposals, called for capping these related research funds, saying they were sometimes used to fund diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Cutting such costs would “reduce federal taxpayer subsidization of leftist agendas,” Project 2025’s authors said.An N.I.H. social media post said the change could save the federal government as much as $4 billion and sharply cut payments to Harvard, Yale and Johns Hopkins Universities, which have overhead rates above 60 percent of their grant sums.Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat of Washington, said in a statement late Friday that the move could “dismantle the biomedical research system, stifle the development of new cures for disease, and rip treatments away from patients in need.”She said the change could shut down some clinical trials at institutions in her state, such as the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center and University of Washington.The N.I.H. spent about $35 billion in 2023 on about 50,000 competitive grants to about 300,000 researchers at 2,500 universities, medical schools and other research institutions nationwide, according to the new policy. Of that, about $26 billion directly funded research and $9 billion covered indirect costs. The policy is set to take effect Monday. More

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      Dr Martin Makary Chosen to Head the FDA

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      President-elect Donald J. Trump announced on Friday that he would nominate Dr. Martin A. Makary, a Johns Hopkins University surgeon with a contrarian streak, to be commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.In a post on social media, Mr. Trump said: “F.D.A. has lost the trust of Americans and lost sight of its primary goal as a regulator.” He said that Dr. Makary would work under Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the president-elect’s choice for the cabinet-level role as health secretary, to “properly evaluate harmful chemicals poisoning our nation’s food supply and drugs.”“I am confident that Dr. Makary, having dedicated his career to high-quality, lower-cost care will restore the F.D.A. to the gold standard of scientific research and cut the bureaucratic red tape at the agency to make sure Americans get the medical cures and treatments they deserve,” Mr. Trump said in a statement.Mr. Trump announced two other top health picks on Friday evening as well. He chose Dr. Dave Weldon, a physician and former congressman from Florida, to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.For years, Dr. Weldon championed the notion that thimerosal, a preservative once used widely in vaccines, caused an explosion of autism cases around the world. In 2007, he backed a bill proposing to take vaccine safety research out of the hands of the C.D.C. Health officials reject the idea that research shows any link between thimerosal and autism.Mr. Trump also put forward Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, a physician and Fox News contributor, to be surgeon general. She worked caring for patients after Hurricane Katrina, an announcement from Mr. Trump said, and on the front lines of the Covid pandemic in New York City. She also markets vitamin B and vitamin C dietary supplements.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      $1 Billion Bloomberg Gift to Hopkins Makes Tuition Free for Most Medical Students

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      The gift, made by Michael R. Bloomberg’s philanthropic organization, will also cover living expenses for some Johns Hopkins University students.A $1 billion gift from Michael Bloomberg to Johns Hopkins University, announced on Monday, will allow most students at the university’s medical school to attend free of cost and will also increase financial aid for other students in the university’s schools of nursing and public health and other graduate programs.Bloomberg Philanthropies, which oversees Mr. Bloomberg’s charitable efforts, said in a statement that the gift would ensure that “the most talented aspiring doctors representing the broadest range of socio-economic backgrounds will have the opportunity to graduate debt-free” from the university.Starting with the fall semester, Johns Hopkins will offer free tuition for medical students from families that earn less than $300,000 annually, Bloomberg Philanthropies said. The university will also pay for living expenses and other fees for students from families earning up to $175,000.Mr. Bloomberg, a former mayor of New York City and a graduate of Johns Hopkins, said in a statement that the high cost of medical school and graduate school “too often bars students from enrolling” at a crucial time when the United States faces a shortage of medical professionals.“By reducing the financial barriers to these essential fields, we can free more students to pursue careers they’re passionate about and enable them to serve more of the families and communities who need them the most,” Mr. Bloomberg said.Other universities have also been able to waive tuition for medical students in recent years. Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx did so after Ruth Gottesman, a longtime professor there, made a $1 billion donation earlier this year. In 2023, Kenneth G. Langone, a billionaire financier and a founder of Home Depot, and his wife, Elaine Langone, made a $200 million donation to the N.Y.U. Long Island School of Medicine, making tuition free for medical students.This is not the first large contribution to Johns Hopkins from Mr. Bloomberg, who routinely makes donations toward the arts, education, the environment and public health. Bloomberg Philanthropies made a $1.8 billion donation to the university in 2018 as part of an effort to ensure that undergraduate students would be accepted by the university regardless of their family’s income.Ron Daniels, the president of Johns Hopkins University, said in a statement on Monday that “removing financial barriers to individual opportunity fuels excellence, innovation and discoveries that redound to the benefit of society.”The new gift from Mr. Bloomberg will mean that nearly two-thirds of medical students who currently attend Johns Hopkins or who will enter programs at the university soon will be eligible for free tuition or both free tuition and living expenses, according to the university. Those who are eligible will soon receive updated financial aid packages.José Luis Castro, the president and chief executive of Vital Strategies, a nonprofit public health organization, said on social media that the gift to Johns Hopkins was “transformational and inspiring” and that it would “help meet the growing need for doctors and public health professionals.” More

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      Shani Mott, Black Studies Scholar Who Examined Power All Around Her, Dies at 47

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      Her work looked at how race and power are experienced in America. In 2022, she filed a lawsuit saying that the appraisal of her home was undervalued because of bias.Shani Mott, a scholar of Black studies at Johns Hopkins University whose examinations of race and power in America extended beyond the classroom to her employer, her city and even her own home, has died in Baltimore. She was 47.She died of adrenal cancer on March 12, said her husband, Nathan Connolly, a professor of history at Johns Hopkins.Though Dr. Mott spent her career in some of academia’s elite spaces, she was firmly committed to the idea that scholarship should be grounded and tangible, not succumbing to ivory tower abstraction. She encouraged students to turn a critical eye to their own backgrounds and to the realities of the world around them. In a city like Baltimore, with its complicated and often cruel racial history, there was plenty to scrutinize.“How do we think about what we’re doing and how it relates to a city like Baltimore?” is how Minkah Makalani, the director of the university’s Center for Africana Studies, described some of the questions that drove Dr. Mott’s work. “There was this kind of demanding intellectual curiosity that she had that she brought to everything that really pushed the conversation and required that people think about what we’re doing in more tangible ways.”Her research focused on American books both popular and literary, and how they revealed the kind of conversation about race that was allowed by the publishing industry and other cultural gatekeepers. This work connected to a larger theme of her scholarship: how big institutions determine how race is discussed and experienced in America.As an active member of the Johns Hopkins faculty, she pointedly explored the ways the university engaged, or did not engage, with its own workers and the majority Black city in which it sits. In 2018 and 2019, Dr. Mott was a principal investigator for the Housing Our Story project, which interviewed Black staff workers at Johns Hopkins whose voices had not been included in the campus archives. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More