Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Sunday, January 26th.

Today on Forbes, with NIH in chaos, scientists fear Trump will hamstring critical medical research.

Last Wednesday, around 1.30 p.m. Pacific Time, Esther Chu, a professor of emergency medicine at Oregon Health and Science University,

got an email that the National Institutes of Health Study section she was slated to sit on the next

day was canceled. Within hours, as word of NIH meeting cancellations pinged across the

social media platform, Blue Sky, she realized that this wasn't only about the opioid

research she would be reviewing, but a broader NIH research shutdown.

Chu noted that there was no announcement on the NIH website.

But as it became clear that the cancellation involved all stages of scientific proposals

in the grants review process, the reality sunk in, and she began

to gauge best case and worst-case possibilities. She said, quote, we are preparing for the worst.

It's very stressful, especially when your entire career or training path hinges on it.

The NIH is the crown jewel of American scientific research, investing most of its $47 billion

budget on medical research.

Without the NIH meetings known as study sections, the agency can't review grants and thus

can't make research awards.

Those funds are critically important in helping researchers study cancer, Alzheimer's disease,

diabetes, and opioid addiction, among numerous other health issues, and have helped fund

major breakthroughs, including Moderna's development of its MRNA vaccine against COVID-19.

Vaccinations against COVID-19 saved at least 14 million people from dying in the first year.

Pretty much every major university or medical institution relies on federal grants to fund their research,

with big recipients of NIH funding, including Johns Hopkins University, the University of Pennsylvania,

...