Research Monkeys May Be Euthanized Because of Trump’s Funding Freeze, Harvard Professors Warn – ryan

Top researchers at Harvard University are warning that President Donald Trump’s funding freeze might lead to the deaths of their research animals.

On Tuesday, April 15, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) issued a stop-work order to researchers, following Trump’s Monday night decision to halt $2 billion in federal funding to projects being conducted at the prestigious private university.

The freeze is in response to Harvard defying the president’s list of demands issued on Friday, April 11. The list included turning over admissions and hiring data, abolishing diversity programs and complying with federal orders regarding foreign students.

“No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” Harvard president Alan Garber wrote in an open letter Monday afternoon.

Trump’s antisemitism task force fired back, saying, “Harvard’s statement today reinforces the troubling entitlement mindset that is endemic in our nation’s most prestigious universities and colleges — that federal investment does not come with the responsibility to uphold civil rights laws.”

The freeze in funding doesn’t just affect the researchers or those whose projects might help in the future. For Sarah Fortunelead scientist on a promising tuberculosis study, even more lives are at stake.

Her $60 million contract with the NIH included studying the effects of the vaccines for the deadly disease on macaques, a type of primate. Fortune told the Boston Globe the macaques may have to be euthanized if they cannot spend federal funds to feed and care for them.

“They’re so precious,” Fortune said of the animals. “It’s such a heavy responsibility to work with them and to just be asked to kill them halfway through the study…”

Hers is not an isolated situation. In addition to possibly laying off scientists if the funding freeze continues for too long, Fortune noted, “Anybody who has animal studies ongoing… is looking at killing the animals.”

However, the professor added that she supported Harvard’s decision to defy Trump and begin the work stop, which is initially set to last up to 90 days. “I feel better about going down on the right side of this action,” she said.

Harvard is the most notable U.S. institution to stand up to the Trump administration’s demands so far. Fellow Ivy League school Columbia University caved last month, agreeing to new oversight for their Middle East studies department, among other demands.

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The Trump administration has said that many of its demands are directed at curbing antisemitic discrimination against Jewish students or athletic discrimination against female athletes. However, critics have accused those demands of being anti-Palestine and anti-trans, respectively.

Tyler Cowarda lawyer with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said Trump’s withholdings of federal funding are “unlawful abuses of government power.”

“We’ve been saying since this started that it’s going to take an institution standing up for its own rights to put an end to this,” he told the Globe. “Thankfully, Harvard chose a different course than Columbia and is asserting its rights to remain free from a hostile takeover from the federal government.”