CNN
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At the end of last week, Dr. Colin Kelly said he was receiving texts every 10 minutes from his colleagues who finished HIV -related research subsidies by the federal government.
Kelley, chairman of the HIV Medicine Association, said, “This is pure confusion and madness. The National Institute of Health has canceled two subsidies for her HIV project last week. We have raised funds for the massive HIV clinical trial network.
Kelly said, “This is just a huge lineage.
NIH has removed funds for dozens of HIV -related research subsidies. Ministry of Health and Welfare Database updated last week Threat the national research and threats. Some researchers say that this cut was not hoped to end HIV in the United States and the world.
Dr. Perry Halkitis, a professor of public health and health equality at Rutgers University, said, “Many federal subsidies for preventing and treating HIV are the causes of alarms. NIH has canceled the funds of Rutgers projects that investigate stigma and aging among HIV positive and voice men with men.
“HIV remains an important public health problem for all over the country, especially for individuals and people of sexual minorities.” As a dean of public health, HIV researchers, and proud gay men for more than 20 years, I am deeply concerned about the impact of the elimination of these subsidies to end our AIDS. ”
NIH told CNN to remove the subsidies, “According to the presidential memo. ‘The radical transparency on waste expenditure. “ According to the administrative order, the government instructs the public to spend too much money on programs, contracts and subsidies that do not promote the interests of the US, and inform the public about all terms of terms of termination, canceled contracts, terminated subsidies, or other duty of federal funds.
Since 1981, HIV has killed more than 700,000 people in the United States. More than 1.2 million Americans live with HIV. Federal statistics. About 13%of people with HIV do not know that they have.
Until 2030, the US End AIDS was one of Donald Trump’s priority. 2019 Union It’s a speech, but the second Trump administration suggests that it will significantly reduce HIV -related projects.
Experts worry that the Trump administration will cut the CDC’s HIV office and budget. 2023 It was so in fiscal year Almost $ 1.3 billion Prevent and control HIV, virus hepatitis, tuberculosis and infectious diseases. Most of these funds are moved to external organizations such as state and local health departments and community -based organizations, and about one -fourth goes to CDC for laboratory, outbreak response and other costs.
Roll Back Research funds have been raised to reduce USAID and fund the management and research of overseas HIV infectious diseases.
The United Nations on Monday “Surge” of AIDS death New infections without US funds.
“We will see (we) coming back, and we will see people die in the way we see in the 90’s and 2000s.” unaids Winnie byanyima, executive director of the world, said in 2023 that he predicted “10 times increase” from 600,000 AIDS -related deaths.
HIV research spending accounts for some of the US budget for HIV. In 2022, $ 2.7 billion (7%of the domestic HIV budget) devoted itself to domestic research. According to KFF.
According to the subsidy end email, the HIV researcher’s work is no longer consistent with the administration’s priority, Kelley said.
The emails received by Dr. Aniruddha Hazra and other colleagues who studied HIV have come to “two different flavors”. He said: “One said:“ One is more diversity, equity, including medicine, and other subsidies for other subsidies that were looking back at the LGBTQ population.
The government department removed the diversity language from the website and signed the administrative order after Trump signed the administrative order and ended the diversity, equity and included programs. Instructed them to do so. different Executive order Only two men and women who supported transgender people were recognized and demanded to finish the comprehensive language and program.
Hazra, who recently canceled subsidies at the NIH and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said his study focused on the treatment and prevention of the underprivileged.
Hazra said, “Everything of this kind falls along the cross line of the administration.”
Without funding, HIV may no longer be included in a wide range of projects.
NIH told Dr. Lisa Bowleg, a professor of psychological and brain science at George Washington University, that she was canceled for a project to investigate cross -discrimination and social structural factors in order to understand the dangers of black men on mental health and surgery abuse. This work also dealt with HIV.
Bowleg said, “In the case of HIV sculptures, other men (and black heterosexual women) who had more than 40 years of HIV epidemic, black gay, bisexual and male (and black heterosexual women) have a more unbalanced HIV incidence and prevalence compared to the American white and other racial/racial groups.” Ending does not end the problem. Simply worsens. ”
HIVs can be prevented, but black and Latin men are at risk of catching viruses. According to the 2016 analysis of CDC, one -quarter of the black gay men and one -fourth of Latin gay men will be diagnosed as HIV. Their life. There is a gap in understanding why this community is affected, and Bowleg’s research was one of the projects that canceled the funds to fill this gap.
Bowleg said it was heard from three other colleagues who lost NIH subsidies to study the topic of health equality on Monday.
“This was fatal,” she said.
Bowleg said, “At the end of the end of me with a lot of health equality, I have an opportunity to end the world after the US HIV epidemic.” In the United States, if we are suffering from brutal HIV statistics for black men just eight to nine years ago, I imagined what Pike is coming down. The programs and interventions of the end of the research and the research will be indexingly and meaningless to HIV epidemic (and many other health conditions). ”
In the case of researchers and their work, the immediate future is uncertain and the long -term future is dark.
Dr. Michelle Birkett, a psychologist and associate professor at the Department of Medical Social Sciences at North Western University, said NIH has canceled subsidies for a project that looks at HIV’s imbalances. She just hired people for work and tried to start data collection when the school was removed. BIRKett said NIH did not contact himself.
Birkett said she was looking for another fund, but the competition would be stiff.
“Many colleagues have been terminated for the last few days,” she said. “I am worried about the survival of this work in the future.”
Hazra at the University of Chicago said it is difficult to plan a way to proceed with the cancellation of subsidies.
“I think many of us are waiting for the guidelines for what we mean not only to our own investigators but also to our employees.”
Some agencies can provide bridges to some investigators but are not sustainable.
Hazra is especially disappointing that he and many other researchers think that this country is close to ending HIV epidemics.
Hazra said, “It’s confusing that we’ll come back and start with decades of progress so far, but this is what happens.
Researchers said they would harm patients by cutting funds.
“People will die based on these decisions that have occurred in the last few weeks, and I don’t say it’s dramatic. I will become a realist and lose their lives, and I don’t know if the bigger masses are at least fully understanding this fact.” Hazra said. “This feels like a massacre of production and does not exaggerate it.”
The American Academy of HIV Medicine also said that the deep cut of HIV research subsidies said, “We will lose and destroy numerous lives without access to the discovery of life as a direct result of HIV innovation and research efforts.”
Packett has been steadily decreasing for many years, and Packett has written greatly due to the success of the research that properly funds.
Packett said, “This massive reduction in HIV research effectively returns the domestic reaction to HIV infectious diseases and extensive gender health, and as the short -term and time increases, the increase in the new HIV and other STIs increases.”
