At the root of scientific discovery is the accumulation of thought, skill, and work of people and communities everywhere — research. However, regulating this multibillion-dollar industry requires both financial and ethical infrastructures. In terms of medical research, federal infrastructures like the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other substructures, like Institutional Review Boards (IRBs), exist to regulate these aspects of medical research. But, what happens if they lose funding?
This question becomes increasingly relevant in the context of current events under the Trump administration. On February 7, a proposed policy was announced that made the NIH limit the indirect funding capacity for each research grant to 15% — meaning that, at maximum, only 15% of a grant a research lab obtains can go towards indirect funding [1]. Indirect funding goes towards the facilities that each lab uses, such as the building’s maintenance, other laboratory supplies, and salaries [2], which are all essential for adequately supporting a lab and a project. The rationale for such budget cuts comes down to increasing “government efficiency” by minimizing any spending deemed “unnecessary” [1]. Similar cuts have been made to other governmental departments, such as the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services [3]. This new NIH policy means that research labs and facilities across the nation will need to cut back on the number of projects, scholars, and utilities that they use, stagnating scientific progression, and medical discovery.
With this NIH budget cut, there will be fewer federal donations being supplied by facilities towards research. Therefore, this places a significantly higher financial burden on the universities and institutions that carry these labs — a burden that they cannot currently sustain [4]. Duke themselves has commented that the proposed policy would deprive them of about $194 million USD, causing significant stalling in their research and cease initiatives for discovery [5]. With this unstable financial responsibility, facilities are left to turn to additional, external funding sources. However, when their primary sources of research funding turn away from the government and to private enterprises, this can convolute a fundamental sentiment of all research: to avoid a conflict of interest. Private donors are easily able to target certain medical interests and avoid others that they deem unnecessary, potentially shifting the landscape of research in a biased way. Therefore, this financial burden on research-inhabiting facilities has the potential to complicate research ethics in an unforeseen way.
Introducing additional funding sources can also convolute the idea of “beneficence” in medical research. In an abstract sense, beneficence in research can be defined as minimizing harm to any research participants, something that is typically screened through IRBs, but also as maximizing “benefits to participants and society” [6]. However, with more potential financial partners in play, these societal benefits are increasingly ill-defined — what is beneficial, and what is of interest? Moreover, what is actually being done with the research would progressively be in the hands of other associates, rather than just the government and the university/institution. This additional dynamic adds another perspective of what deems a certain project as beneficial as it inherently introduces another interest. This complication of “beneficence” becomes even more relevant in projects that do not require the screening of an IRB.
It is further likely that many institutions will simply cut the number of projects they support [4], inherently increasing the selectivity of projects proposed by individual laboratories or researchers. How does one deem which project is more worthy of another if they pertain to two different fields entirely? While these questions and complications are always present, they are highlighted and intensified in light of recent events and pose interesting ethical questions regarding not only research itself but its relationship with the government as a multibillion-dollar industry.
Reviewed by Sanjana Anand
References
[1] Guardian News and Media. (2025, February 8). Trump administration to cut billions in medical research funding. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/08/trump-administration-medical-research-funding-cuts
[2] Direct costs vs. indirect costs. University Research. (2015, April 23). https://vpresearch.louisiana.edu/pre-award/building-your-budget/direct-costs-vs-indirect-costs
[3] Kinnard, M. (2025, February 19). A comprehensive look at Doge’s firings and layoffs so far. AP News. https://apnews.com/article/doge-firings-layoffs-federal-government-workers-musk-d33cdd7872d64d2bdd8fe70c28652654
[4] Badger, E., Bhatia, A., Cabreros, I., Murray, E., Paris, F., Sanger-katz, M., & Singer, E. (2025, February 14). How trump’s medical research cuts would hit colleges and hospitals in every State. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/02/13/upshot/nih-trump-funding-cuts.html
[5] Brinn, L. (2025, February 13). Information about changes to NIH indirect cost reimbursement rates - Duke University: Office of the president. Duke University | Office of the President. https://president.duke.edu/2025/02/13/information-about-changes-to-nih-indirect-cost-reimbursement-rates/
[6] Mondragón Barrios, L., Martínez Levy, G. A., Díaz-Anzaldúa, A., & Estrada Camarena, E. (2022, September 30). Rethinking benefits in Health Research, reflections of an Ethics Committee. The Yale journal of biology and medicine. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9511940/
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