Trump Cut Cancer Research That Could Save My Daughter’s Life

The human cost of this administration's war on science.

Photo Credit: The White House

By Tauna from Home of the Brave

My daughter recently moved to Seattle for a new job, but what should have been an exciting fresh start was complicated by a lymphoma diagnosis. As a family we vowed she wouldn’t face this cancer alone, and that we’d do everything in our power to get her the support and the care she needs.

When she got to Seattle, her new doctors had encouraging news: there was a clinical trial specifically for her type of lymphoma, and she was eligible to participate. The moment she heard about the study, she didn’t hesitate—she wanted in.

The potential upsides of this study were enormous. If successful, the treatment could turn back the clock back on her cancer by 10 to 15 years. For the first time since her diagnosis, we felt genuine hope. As a mother, it brought me joy to know that this kind of cutting edge research was happening, and that my daughter might benefit from it.

Then Donald Trump got elected, and everything changed.

After Trump took office, his administration started cutting billions of dollars from federal science funding that helped support programs like this. The National Institutes of Health froze payments to thousands of scientists, and clinical trials across the country suddenly found themselves without the funding they needed to continue. Some managed to cobble together alternative funding, but many had no choice but to shut down entirely.

My daughter’s clinical trial was one of them. We learned that it was paused for lack of funding, which puts her access to the trial in jeopardy, even if it’s resumed. In order to be eligible, the study requires that the patient has never had prior treatment for the disease. That means, if her disease begins to progress and she requires conventional treatment, she would not be eligible any longer. This ‘pause’ wasn’t just a pause—it might end up slamming the door on her accessing the treatment altogether.

To me, that’s not just an example of bad governance. It shows a complete disregard for the actual people whose lives hang in the balance. It takes a special kind of callousness to take away cancer patients’ hope—and for what? To score a quick political point? This was done in the name of “efficiency,” but there’s nothing efficient about unceremoniously denying scientists the opportunity to research new, potentially groundbreaking treatments.

Now my daughter and our whole family are facing a far more uncertain future. We’re still committed to getting her the best treatment we can, and we still hold out hope for breakthrough treatments. But I don’t know that we’ll ever forgive the fact that she was eligible for a potential breakthrough study, took all the right steps to get herself into that study, and then had it all taken away from her for no good reason.

We’re not alone. Since Trump and Elon Musk launched their slash-and-burn attack on the government, we’ve seen countless heartbreaking stories of other families going through similar hardships. One woman with stage-four colorectal cancer spoke publicly about how NIH cuts threatened her access to treatment, saying, “I’m pleading for my life. I’m begging for help.”

The scientists and doctors running the studies are also sounding the alarm about how destructive these cuts are. One researcher at Northwestern University whose funding was cut told The Guardian: “This will effectively shut down cancer research in this country and destroy the careers of many scientists. This is devastating.”

It didn’t have to be this way. For generations, Republican and Democratic presidents alike understood that medical research isn’t a political issue, it’s a human one. Cancer doesn’t care who you voted for. And our collective investment in cancer research through federal funding paid for itself multiple times over, helping American researchers develop and bring to market breakthrough cures that completely transformed the life prospects for many people with serious diseases.

I don’t know why this administration chose to abandon all of that. But I know who will pay the price: it’s my daughter, our family, and countless others facing diseases that could have been cured—maybe even you or someone you love.

Tauna is a mother and a participant in Home of the Brave, a new initiative highlighting the harms of Donald Trump’s second term.