Science is together in its nature. Many consortiums and alliances within scientific fields cross boundaries and language barriers. Some laboratories may find additional financing from alternative sources such as the European Union. But a continued withdrawal of the NIH funding is unlikely to be linked by overseas support. And Big Pharma, with his seemingly endless funds, is probably not that it will act, according to the sources that spoke to Wired.

“It cannot be handed over to drug businesses or biotechnology because they are not interested in things that are as preclinical as many of the work we discuss here,” says a professor of genetics who agreed to speak anonymously of fear for retaliation. “In essence, there is a whole legion of university scientists, who work very hard to try to find out some basic things that eventually become something a drug business can drop $ 100 million.”

The millions of dollars allocated to laboratories are used to finance graduate students, laboratory techniques and analysts. If the main investigator on a research team is not successful in obtaining an award through the process that Keusch describes, the laboratory is often closed, and those supplementary team members lose their jobs.

One of the potential downstream of a NIH financing loss, even if only temporarily, is a mass of household brain. “Many of these people are going to find something else to do,” says the professor of genetics. “It’s just like work for anything else – we can’t pay people for a month. For example, how would the food service industry be, or grocery stores, if they didn’t pay someone for a month? Their workers will leave, and Pharma can hire just as many people. “

Wired hearing over and over, of scientists who are too scared of their teams and their work to speak on the record, that it will not take long to achieve the impact to reach the general population. With a loss of research funding comes the closure of hospitals and universities. And profits in medical progress are also likely to be shaky.

Conditions studied with NIH funding are not just rare diseases that affect 1 or 2 percent of the population. These are problems like cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s – believers who influence your grandmother, your friends and so many people who will one day fall out of perfect health. This is due to this research system and the scientists who work in it, that doctors know how to save someone from a heart attack, regulate diabetes, lower cholesterol and reduce the risk of stroke. This is how the world knows that smoking is not a good idea. “All of this is knowledge that scientists who are funded by the NIH have generated, and if you throw this big wrench in it, it will absolutely disrupt everything,” says the genetic professor.

Some are hopeful that the freezing of the financing for the Academy can end on February 1, when the break is on communication and therefore awards judgments to uplift, the individuals who were wired are largely skeptical that work will simply resume as before.