Facing Funding Cuts, MD-PhD Students Write Home

As students in the Harvard/MIT MD-PhD program, Claire Brown and Ronak Desai have spent a lot of time talking with classmates about threats to federal research funding. But as funding cuts went into effect this spring, they noticed that the issue wasn’t getting a lot of attention in many communities outside academia, including in their hometowns.

“A lot of people didn’t understand exactly what the research funding cuts entailed,” says Desai, who grew up in the small, rural town of Lindale, Texas. “In fact, when I would mention that the MD-PhD program funding was cut, I don’t think there was a single person who wasn’t surprised.”

“I remember being shocked that something as apolitical and, I hope, non-divisive as medical research was coming under attack,” says Brown, who is from Waukee, Iowa. “I wanted to help people in my community at home understand why this is so important.”

To that end, Brown and Desai decided to speak out, writing opinion pieces for publications in their home states.

Brown, a second-year student, shared her experiences as both a scientist and a cancer survivor in an op-ed in the Des Moines Register. “I care about the funding of science, medicine, and education not just as a scientist and future physician, but as a patient myself,” she wrote. “Science saved my life, and I want to use it to help others. It is my aspiration that one day the treatments I engineer in the lab will change the lives of patients like me — whether they are receiving treatment at Massachusetts General Hospital or Iowa Methodist Medical Center.”

Growing up, Desai says, Harvard seemed out of reach. “It felt like a place in my imagination,” he says. “Not a place where I would end up.” He’s now in his fourth year in the program and working to develop new antibiotics as a member of the lab led by MIT engineering professor James Collins.

Science saved my life, and I want to use it to help others.

In an article in the Texas Observer, he thanked his hometown. “My path to medicine began in Lindale,” he wrote. “I never dreamed these experiences would take me to Harvard Medical School. But my teachers did.” Now, he said, the future of his work was at stake: “Terminating those grants threatens our ability to do this research, and, with it, the promise of making discoveries that will one day improve and save lives.”

Both Brown and Desai say they’ve gotten positive feedback from people back home about their articles. They plan to continue to advocate for science and to bridge the gap between researchers and the general public.

“I genuinely believe that a lot of the reason that there is so much pushback to funding for research is because people just don’t understand what it means to do research, how much of an iterative process it is, and why it’s so expensive,” says Brown, who has talked to local and national media outlets about the importance of scientific research. “If we can do more to connect with people and explain this to them, that could go a really long way.”

Desai adds, “I think people truly do appreciate the importance of research and the lifesaving breakthroughs that it can make. So I’m hopeful that things will come around and that understanding will once again translate to continued, stable funding.”

Amos Esty is the editor of Harvard Medicine.