News today was that medical trials funded by USAID screeched to a halt this week. Stuff like AIDS prevention.
But some of our LifeX founders have been pointing out other payments that might abruptly cease — NIH… NSF…
Last week the websites for various health finance services were down for 24 hours. People got nervous that their hospitals wouldn’t get paid what is owed by the federal govt. But I’m not aware of folks that stopped giving care.
But if a science trial gets “cut” the scientists are not a business. They don’t have any other funds to keep the lights on.
And when a trial is interrupted – like the mice don’t get the injection one day, or the nuclear fissile material stops getting processed… you lose the whole study.
I am told that World Health Organization has told all its global grantees to EXPECT this to happen and stop research that might be broken by an interruption in funding.
Chaos good or chaos bad…?