US: California moves to create its own science institute amid federal funding cuts

California, May 4 (IANS) California lawmakers are racing to build its own National Institutes of Health (NIH) as the US administration pushed deep federal funding cuts that experts warned could cripple innovation, damage the economy, and put future medical breakthroughs at risk.

The proposed California Institute for Scientific Research (CISR), aiming to protect critical research on diseases, climate change and drug safety as federal support evaporates, was set for a hearing on Monday, said California State Senator Scott Wiener, who authored the bill.

The administration's latest budget blueprint, released on Friday, called for a 22.6 per cent reduction, totalling $163 billion, in non-defence discretionary spending for the coming fiscal year. Science and health agencies were among the hardest hit under the plan, reports Xinhua news agency.

California, which received over $5 billion in NIH funding last year, felt the impact acutely.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the University of California system, Stanford University, the California Institute of Technology and the University of Southern California were among the nation's top recipients of NIH grants.

The sudden loss of federal funding threatened to halt clinical trials, shutter labs and lay off thousands of researchers.

At the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), epidemiologist Beate Ritz recently told the Los Angeles Times that the loss of NIH support would force her to shut down studies on pollution and neurodegenerative diseases.

Gina Poe, a UCLA neurobiologist, said her lab's indirect funding would drop from $114,000 to almost nothing, jeopardising decades of work on sleep and memory.

The proposed CISR legislation would authorise grants and loans for public and private research entities while expanding California's capacity to produce and distribute vaccines.

"California is a global leader on science in our own right, and we must step in to protect our scientific institutions from the new administration's anti-science, Make America Sick Again onslaught," Senator Scott Wiener said in a statement when introducing the bill in March.

Wiener criticised the Department of Government Efficiency for "systematically dismantling" scientific research in the United States by slashing personnel and programs at all federal science agencies and stressed that California must step up and fill the void left by the federal cuts.

"Ours is a state known as a national and global leader in life-saving biomedical research," California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement.

"I will not allow the administration to jeopardise the extraordinary work being done right now by scientists, scholars, medical professionals and other workers."

--IANS

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