Trump credit card freeze crippling cancer and Alzheimer's research

An illustration of cancer cells. (Getty Images)

On February 26, President Trump issued an executive order expanding the power of the United States DOGE Service (DOGE), the government initiative controlled by Elon Musk. The purpose of the order is to limit any spending not specifically approved by one of Musk's associates working for DOGE.

One provision of the February 26 executive order that has received little attention is a 30-day freeze of all government credit cards. The credit card freeze has brought critical research, including research about cures and treatments for cancer and Alzheimer's, to a halt, according to an NIH source with direct knowledge.

The credit card freeze allows for "operations or other critical services as determined by the Agency Head, and subject to such additional individualized or categorical exceptions as the Agency Head, in consultation with the agency’s DOGE Team Lead, deems appropriate." But, according to the NIH source, there has been no categorical exception for the intramural research being done on NIH's Bethesda campus and other locations. The result is that most of this scientific research has stopped.

Musk has angrily rejected claims that DOGE or the Trump administration have hindered funding for cancer research. "The White House can lie all they want about how they're not stopping cancer research," the NIH source said, "but they're stopping cancer research on [NIH's] Bethesda campus."

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The NIH's intramural program, the term for research that occurs directly on NIH's campus rather than at academic institutions funded by NIH grants, has played a central role in key cancer breakthroughs for decades. The NIH's intramural program has been responsible for "combination chemotherapy for lymphoma and leukemia," the development of vaccines that prevent cancer, and immunotherapy. Much of this work is detailed in The Empire of All Maladies, a Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Siddhartha Mukherjee, which was turned into a documentary by Ken Burns.

This work has saved lives. NIH work on combination chemotherapy, for example, boosted survival rates for Hodgkin's lymphoma from 0% to 70%. Similarly, the NIH's intramural team developed a four-drug treatment that increased the survival rate for children diagnosed with leukemia from effectively 0% to nearly 90%. NIH researchers identified the particles in human papillomavirus (HPV) that cause cancer. The resulting vaccine has shown to be 100% effective in preventing HPV16 and HPV18, the two deadliest forms of the virus. In the coming decades, this work will prevent millions of people from developing cancer and save millions of lives.

More recently, an NIH intramural study demonstrated how an "experimental form of immunotherapy that uses an individual’s own tumor-fighting immune cells could potentially be used to treat people with metastatic breast cancer." After receiving the treatment, one woman saw "her tumors [shrink] completely" and she remained "cancer free more than five years later."

The NIH intramural program plays a unique role that cannot be duplicated elsewhere because of the presence of an on-campus clinical center. This allows researchers to test cutting-edge care in a controlled hospital setting on volunteer patients who are not responding to established protocols. People come from all over the world to the NIH Clinical Center to receive advanced and experimental treatments.

Some of the most advanced research on Alzheimer’s disease, which impacts over 6.7 million people in the U.S., occurs on campus at NIH. For example, NIH researchers published a paper last year suggesting that "interventions to slow hearing loss may slow cognitive decline." Other NIH research is exploring whether gene therapy could prevent the development of Alzheimer's.

How does freezing credit cards stop scientific research conducted at NIH?

Studying how cells from a cancer or Alzheimer's patient, for example, are influenced by a particular drug requires special "media," a term for a nutrient-rich liquid that provides fuel for cell cultures. To perform this work, you need to buy the media, and it needs to arrive at the appropriate time. If you don't have the media, the cells die and the experiment is ruined. Scientists are no longer able to use credit cards to purchase the media, and as a result, this kind of research cannot continue.

Another example is that the NIH builds specialized equipment to conduct cutting-edge research. Some scientists, for example, build advanced microscopes. But now, if a part breaks, these microscopes cannot be fixed because the replacement parts cannot be ordered. Ongoing scientific research requires a constant replenishment of supplies, which cannot happen while the credit card freeze is in effect.

There are numerous other ongoing small purchases that are necessary to keep scientific research going. Prior to the freeze, almost all of these purchases, which typically cost $50,000 or less, were made by government credit card.

The exception process, which per the terms of the executive order, must be approved by the agency head on a case-by-case basis, is far too cumbersome and time-consuming for the research to continue. The executive order appears to require a DOGE representative to approve each exception. Further, agency leadership appears to be under instructions to approve as little spending as possible.

The reality, according to the NIH source, is that most labs "are not able to buy anything."

The NIH did not immediately respond to a request for comment.