Daijiworld Media Network – Los Angeles
Los Angeles, May 4: In response to sweeping federal funding cuts, California lawmakers are racing to establish their own version of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to safeguard scientific research and medical innovation.
The proposed California Institute for Scientific Research (CISR) is designed to protect critical research on diseases, climate change, and drug safety, as the latest federal budget blueprint threatens to slash non-defence discretionary spending by 22.6 per cent a cut totalling $163 billion. Science and health agencies stand among the hardest hit.
State Senator Scott Wiener, who authored the bill, confirmed the CISR proposal is scheduled for a legislative hearing on Monday. "California is a global leader on science in our own right, and we must step in to protect our scientific institutions from the new administration's anti-science, Make America Sick Again onslaught," Wiener declared in a statement.
California received over $5 billion in NIH funding last year, with major institutions like the University of California system, Stanford, Caltech, and USC among the top beneficiaries. The sudden funding loss now threatens to shut down labs, halt clinical trials, and lay off thousands of researchers.
At UCLA, epidemiologist Beate Ritz warned that her research into pollution and neurodegenerative diseases could be shuttered. Gina Poe, a UCLA neurobiologist, said her lab’s indirect funding would plummet from $114,000 to nearly zero, jeopardizing decades of work on sleep and memory.
The CISR would offer grants and loans to both public and private research entities, while also boosting the state’s ability to develop and distribute vaccines.
Attorney General Rob Bonta backed the move, saying, “I will not allow the administration to jeopardise the extraordinary work being done right now by scientists, scholars, medical professionals and other workers.”
Senator Wiener also lashed out at the Department of Government Efficiency, accusing it of “systematically dismantling” US science infrastructure. “California must step up and fill the void,” he asserted.