Growing up in West Virginia, I was fascinated by the science in nature surrounding me — the deer quietly disappearing into the forest’s edge, the blinking lightning bugs dotting my backyard, the exposed rock layers drawn alongside our winding country roads. Before I even understood being a scientist was a possible career, I had fallen in love with the abstract concept of scientific research ­– this idea that we don’t know all the answers yet, and that figuring them out might just help the world with disease, infrastructure, or even the economy.

But transforming this passion into a feasible career in science was only made possible by a series of federally-funded research opportunities, designed to introduce students to academic science and pay them for their work in research labs. These experiences were game-changers for me. During my first summer of research, I vividly remember writing the beginnings of what would eventually become the PhD application that got me into Harvard Medical School five years later. Now here, I’m studying the interactions between breast cancer and the other cells and systems in our body, which influence how the cancer might spread to other organs.

But just one year into that dream PhD program, I’m beginning to witness and navigate a complete destruction of American science as we know it because of unprecedented cuts to federal research funding. The budgets for the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have proposed cuts of 40-50%. (It’s worth mentioning that for every dollar invested into the NIH, the U.S. gains about $2.46 of economic activity, meaning the institute contributes both scientific and monetary value.)

This past year, West Virginia earned a record $54 million in research funding from the NIH, supporting $148 million in economic activity, and more than 700 jobs.

Thousands of already earned grants across the major funding agencies have been prematurely canceled because of their focus on issues impacting minority groups, including research on rural health care.

The results of this have been crushing. Labs are getting shut down, research projects and ongoing clinical trials are being put on hold (maybe indefinitely), graduate programs are rescinding offers to students, and some of the brightest minds in America are questioning if they should move to other countries with better support or give up their career in science altogether — myself included.

This destabilization has huge implications for the health of this nation and West Virginia in particular. Many of the areas of threatened research impact West Virginians at significantly higher rates.

This includes research for cancer, black lung, opioid addiction, pollutant toxicity, childhood obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Part of my desire to study cancer comes from its exceptionally strong grip on this state. You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in West Virginia that doesn’t have a close friend or family member who’s been affected by the disease. An estimated 13,250 West Virginians will be diagnosed just this year — which is roughly the number of people that fill a sold-out WVU Coliseum. And yet, this is where we’ve chosen to make cuts.

At this point, some of you may be asking why we don’t just keep medical research and cut the “other stuff.” But in science, we never know exactly where the next breakthrough may come. Consider:

Discovering penicillin was an accident. Studying microbes in Yosemite hot springs led to our ability to read DNA. The first chemotherapy was discovered from mustard gas used in WWII.

Good science is exploratory and based first and foremost in curiosity. Investing in medical research without basic research underneath is like buying a car without all the tires. By stripping its funding, we risk losing the greatness of American science. The United States has long been regarded as a beacon for scientific research, the envy of the world because of our public investment in the sciences. It’s why our universities are considered the best. It’s why over the past five years we’ve won more scientific Nobel Prizes than the rest of the world combined. Do we really think that surrendering our global leadership in scientific research is making us better, healthier, safer?

I recognize that science has been targeted as frivolous or fraudulent by the current administration. It’s being portrayed as “inefficient” and “unnecessary.” But I want you to consider this: what kind of country is one that doesn’t believe in, support, or celebrate science?

Our young people deserve funded opportunities to pursue a career in science. Our communities deserve continued focus on diseases that impact this state at a higher rate. And as Americans, we deserve a government that invests in our future, not throws it away. Some may not view new scientific innovation as a need for America, but I would argue that it is definitely something West Virginians in particular deserve.

To support American science, join me in signing the Citizens for Science Pledge and contacting your local representatives.

Wheeling native Morgan Glass graduated from Wheeling Park High School in 2018 and is now a PhD student at Harvard Medical School in its Biological and Biomedical Sciences Program. This column is part of the McClintock Letters, a collection of letters by scientists in honor of Barbara McClintock, the first American woman to win an unshared Nobel Prize in the sciences. For more info, please view https://blogs.cornell.edu/asap/events-initiatives/the-mcclintock-letters/.)