Shakin' Street — A Parkinson's Blog

I don’t care who you voted for in the last Presidential election. Whether you supported Harris, Trump, Jill Stein, Cornel West, or Pat Paulsen, you made a decision based on criteria that made sense to you, and you’re welcome in my community.

Having said that, I’ll also say this: if you or a loved one has Parkinson’s… or Alzheimer’s…or diabetes…or cancer… and the candidate you supported won the 2024 Presidential election, decisions he’s made are likely to have a direct, negative impact on your lives.

The new administration has attempted to reduce National Institutes of Health “indirect cost” funding to 15% of each total grant — far below what is currently allowed. Indirect costs are things like supplies, equipment, building and lab maintenance, and support staff. The policy is currently tied up in court.

On January 22, the administration froze grant-review meetings at NIH. That freeze has been partially lifted, but Infections Disease Advisor reports that research funding in the first six weeks of the year dropped from $2.5 billion in 2024 to $1.4 billion in 2025.

On March 7, the administration canceled $400 million in federal grants to Columbia University for reasons unrelated to the other cuts. The New York Times reports that $250 million of this comes through NIH for medical research. Columbia is negotiating to get that funding back, but in the meantime, according to the Times, it has put dozens of studies on hold.

There is a lot of uncertainty as these things work their way through the system, but if the cuts stand, they have the potential to set back the effort to cure Parkinson’s by years.

Duke University, home of a nationally-renowned Movement Disorders Center, has begun to cut back:

Already, the uncertainty is causing reverberations at Duke’s School of Medicine, which receives over three-quarters of the university’s NIH funding. Expansion projects are being shelved. Fewer Ph.D. students are being admitted. And researchers are assessing whether their projects can continue.

Dr. Jack Lipton, Associate Dean of Research Analytics at Michigan State University’s Medical School, summarized the potential impact to a local West Michigan TV station:

Michigan State University’s Grand Rapids-based research center houses 33 research teams. Areas of emphasis include Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and women’s health.

Dr. Lipton tells me losing NIH funding would stop their work. “If we have this kind of cut to the work that we do, we’re just not going to be able to do it anymore,” Dr. Lipton said…

…Dr. Lipton says Michigan State University would likely lose about 27 million dollars. “There’s two pieces that fund research. There’s the project based research that we do, which includes the funding for Parkinson’s disease or Alzheimer’s disease, and then there’s additional funds that we receive that are related to the cost of running the laboratories in which we work,” Dr. Lipton said.

In big picture terms, a lot of Parkinson’s research is likely to be slowed or stopped in the next few years. The Michael J. Fox Foundation has a good summary of the various factors in play.

And these issues have already affected individual people. The New York Times is working on a story about that — here’s a screenshot from their mobile app from March 20:

While the Times works on their story, I’ve got one to share.

Kimberly Jacobsen is a mom, wife and attorney, diagnosed with Parkinson’s at the age of 51. She’s enrolled in a 3-year clinical study and… I’ll let her tell the story.

Multiply Kimberly Jacobsen’s experience by hundreds, or possibly thousands, of studies for Parkinson’s, cancer, dementia, diabetes, cancer, and other diseases, and you’ll see where this is heading.

I’m 65 years old, ain’t getting any younger, and am not in a position to wait extra years for a cure because someone took a wrecking ball to the funding.

So…What Can We Do?

There are two other branches of government that can have an impact on this. The lawyers are going to have to handle the courts — we need to focus on the legislative branch.

The loudest voices have the best chance of getting a response. If you, like this reporter, have a rooting interest in getting the research funding restored, now is the time to contact your Congressperson or Senator.

Bonus points if your Congressperson or Senator is a Republican, since they (in theory anyway) have the President’s ear, and control both houses of Congress.

Here’s a website to get their contact information: https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials . Fill in your home address and it’ll give you their address and phone number.

A phone call, especially if you can get a live human being on the phone, is likely to have a stronger impact than an email. So is a letter, typed on paper, put in an envelope with a stamp, and mailed to their office — someone has to open the envelope and read it before it goes in a file.

That’s the best we can do until the midterms roll around.

Bonus for Those Who Read to the Bottom

This is my blog, and I think duets with goats are funny. So here’s “Somebody That I Used to Know.”

“The Devil Went Down to Georgia” performed by voice, guitar, and washing machine.

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Ruthie Foster overpowers Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs.”