Life sciences budget cuts threaten American innovation

Since the beginning of Donald Trump's term, the American research world has been in turmoil. The Wall Street Journal reports on how life sciences in particular have been hit hard, with some fearing that China will soon overtake the United States.

Cartoon by Alex Nabaum published in "The New Republic," New York

Uncertainties surrounding funding for life sciences research threaten the United States' leadership in this field, with risks for the development of certain drugs and American competitiveness in general.

The Trump administration has suffered several legal setbacks since ordering federal agencies to freeze their government funding in January. In early March, a judge ordered the measure to be suspended until further notice.

The situation remains delicate for universities, however, which are reluctant to accept new doctoral students in life sciences – a field funded largely by federal grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) – for fear of another reversal of fortunes.

In the University of Washington's Department of Life Sciences, grants are still coming in as usual, but research isn't equipped to deal with such unknowns, says Justin Kollman, interim chair of the Department of Biochemistry. Universities need to be sure they can fund their students throughout their doctoral studies, which last on average

Steven Rosenbush

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The Wall Street Journal (New York)

It's the bible of the business world. But it must be handled with caution: on the one hand, high-quality investigations and reports, with a concern for neutrality. On the other, highly partisan editorial pages. The columnists and the editorial board defend, often virulently, conservative points of view, even if the publication has always maintained a certain distance from Donald Trump.

Winner of 39 Pulitzer Prizes, The WSJ is best known for its financial market analysis and its coverage of management and business trends. Since its acquisition in July 2007 by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., the daily has evolved into a more general format to rival The New York Times. A luxury lifestyle supplement, called WSJ Magazine, was launched in September 2008.

Based in New York's financial district since its founding in 1889, the newsroom moved from Wall Street in 2008 to News Corp., a little further north, to Midtown. It has a total of 1,800 journalists in nearly fifty countries.

With 600,000 print subscribers, The Wall Street Journal has the largest circulation of any daily newspaper in the United States. And while it trails The New York Times in terms of online subscribers, it still has over 3 million subscribers and over 65 million unique visitors per month, making it the largest paid business and financial news site on the web.