Tuberculosis scientist speaks out on importance of research after ‘stop-work’ order
After immunologist Sarah Fortune received a “stop-work” order from the federal government on April 15 instructing her to halt her world-class tuberculosis research, she began speaking out about why her research matters and what comes next.
Fortune, John LaPorte Given Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, appeared on several national news programs and was quoted in a number of media outlets in the days that followed the stop-work order. She said that she and colleagues had anticipated that their research, funded through a $60 million contract with the National Institutes of Health, could be in jeopardy amid Trump administration moves to freeze research funds at Harvard after the University refused to comply with a list of demands. But when the stop-work order actually arrived, Fortune told CNN, “It was just a gut punch. Terrifying.” And yet, she said, “There was a sense of resolve.”
Fortune describes her tuberculosis research as “a moonshot” effort to fight TB, which—as the world’s leading infectious cause of death—sickens 10 million people each year and kills 1 million. Over the past decade, with NIH funding, she has built a consortium of collaborators, with 21 labs across 13 institutions, to learn more about TB, develop better treatments for the disease, and prevent it.
“This project has been ten years in the making,” she told CNN. “It is actually the NIH’s largest single investment in TB. It was a TB moonshot in order to try to better understand why so many people are infected with TB … with the idea that we need to better be able to diagnose people with TB, better be able to treat people with TB, and ideally have a vaccine that would protect people against TB.”
One “silver lining,” Fortune told MSNBC, was a $500,000 donation provided by Open Philanthropy, enabling researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine to complete a tuberculosis vaccine study that is under Fortune’s research umbrella. Had the work been unable to continue, the study’s research animals, macaque monkeys, may have had to be prematurely euthanized.
Fortune told CNN that the tuberculosis research “is certainly really wounded.” But she hopes the work can somehow continue. “I care so deeply about TB and I hope that we’ll find resources to keep parts of this going,” she said.
Watch the CNN interview: Tuberculosis research hit hard by Trump’s Harvard funding freeze
Watch the MSNBC interview: ‘Total gut punch’: Harvard scientist ordered to hat research due to Trump funding battle
Read a New York Times article: Space Travel and Tuberculosis Research Are Hit by Trump’s Harvard Cuts
Read a Boston Globe article: An NIH stop-work order threatened the lives of monkeys involved in a Harvard-led study. Then came a $500,000 donation.
