Comment from Rebecca Price

I am a researcher in psychology and psychiatry. Throughout my entire career I have been supported by NIH funding. I would not be working in this field without the sustained, reliable financial support of NIH. I would not be working every day to design and test new and improved treatments for conditions like depression, anxiety, and suicide. The work I've done has already contributed to making new, effective treatment options available for patients with difficult to treat conditions, who don't experience relief from conventional approaches. The new proposed rules are designed to dismantle and destroy the entire scientific research infrastructure in our country. As researchers, we will no longer receive funding based on the scientific merit of our proposals, but based on judgments of political appointees. We will not be able to pursue long term clinical research studies safe in the knowledge that grants that are issued will be maintained durably for the years it takes to complete the work. We will not be able to congregate and share our findings and ideas at scientific conferences. All of these changes will affect me personally, but far worse than that, they will stall and/or block scientific discoveries across the board. In the end, it's the American public who will suffer from these careless and reckless proposed changes. We will never even know how many new breakthroughs, treatments, and cures will be denied to the people due to this forceful and purposeful attack on science and on scientific independence and integrity. We will only see the needless suffering, preventable deaths, and poor quality of life all around us, but never know how much better things would have, and should have, been, if the government had simply retained our current, highly successful system.