Washington is dismantling the pathway to the next cancer breakthrough

Pancreatic cancer kills almost everyone it reaches; fewer than 1 in 7 patients lives five years after diagnosis. So, when researchers reported this spring that an experimental mRNA vaccine, in an early trial, had kept most of the patients whose immune systems responded to it alive years later, it was the kind of result that changes what a diagnosis means. A related vaccine has cut the risk of melanoma’s return by nearly half. After decades of false dawns, this one looks real. 

We are celebrating that breakthrough at the precise moment Washington is taking apart the research base behind it. On May 29, the Office of Management and Budget proposed a rule to do it on paper, across every federal science agency. 

The rule requires political appointees to sign off on who gets funded. It downgrades scientific peer review to advice an agency is free to ignore. And it lets the government cancel grants already awarded when projects are judged “no longer in the federal government’s interest.” It is scheduled to take effect Oct. 1., and the public has until July 13 to comment. 

The administration calls this “accountability.” The executive order behind the rule is titled, “Improving Oversight of Federal Grantmaking.” Officials say they are only making sure taxpayers are funding what they call gold-standard science.

Setting broad national research priorities is a legitimate job for elected leaders. But this rule does more than that. It hands appointees who answer to a political agenda the decisions........

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