Speaking during today’s meeting of the Rotary Club of Milwaukee, Raymond slammed the leader of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He said he doesn’t “have a lot of confidence in Secretary Kennedy’s ability to discern gold-standard science from fluff,” adding he’s keeping an open mind but remains very skeptical.
“I was shocked when he made an announcement in early April that after many, many decades of science, that by September, there would be a singular cause of autism that would be announced to the public,” Raymond said. “Science does not work on a schedule, it doesn’t comply with a calendar.”
He also noted federal support for health research funding has a somewhat brighter outlook after President Donald Trump proposed dramatic cuts to the budget for the National Institutes of Health. The proposed 40% reduction for NIH would amount to an $18 billion cut, Raymond said, noting that would have massive disruptions to research institutions including MCW.
“That was a huge threat, and something that we had to do some very significant scenario planning for … initially there was a significant slowdown in the awarding of grants, that pipeline seems to be opening up,” he said. “We provided bridge funding for outstanding scientists who were in limbo. And right now, it looks like the NIH budget may end up being what it was last year.”
While the U.S. Senate version of the federal budget bill would boost NIH funding by a “modest” $450 million, the U.S. House version announced this morning would cut the agency’s funding by the same amount, according to Raymond.
“That probably will end up somewhere in the middle when they do reconciliation, that is a lot better than an $18 billion cut,” he said.
He warned that further threats to U.S. research efforts could jeopardize “an entire generation of scientists,” driving away those who might choose science as a career.
“America’s biomedical research platform, driven by the National Institutes of Health, and the partnership that universities and the NIH have created over the last 50 years is the envy of the world,” he said. “It is the most effective and most efficient biomedical research platform ever conceived, and it’s under threat. It’s under attack right now. So I’m hoping that we’ll continue to have bipartisan investment in the value of research.”
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