A recent analysis by the advocacy group Stand Up for Science indicates that nearly 5,000 clinical trials, including about 1,000 focused on cancer treatments, are at risk of being terminated due to proposed federal regulations. These potential cuts could also impact hundreds of trials related to pediatric, veteran health, and heart disease issues, as highlighted in the report.
The trials face jeopardy due to a rule proposed in May by the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which would grant political appointees the authority to make final decisions on federal research grants across various agencies. This marks a significant shift from the traditional reliance on scientific peer review for grant evaluation. The proposed regulations aim to counter what is termed a “woke policy agenda” and to limit international collaboration, as noted in a statement from the Federal Register. The OMB is currently led by Russell Vought, who is a key figure in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 for the Trump administration.
Clinical trials represent the final phase of testing new medical treatments and interventions, and they involve varying numbers of volunteer patients, based on the objectives of the trial. In a 2025 analysis by JAMA Internal Medicine, it was found that the termination of 383 clinical trials by the Trump administration affected as many as 74,000 patients.
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Stand Up for Science applied the proposed rules to approximately 10,000 clinical trials funded by the National Institutes of Health, finding that nearly half could face termination. A significant number of these trials are international or might use one of over 350 “banned words”—as identified by Pen America, a free speech organization, which claims federal agencies have sought to restrict or prohibit these words. Terms on this list include “abortion,” “solar power,” and “vaccines.”
“People’s lives are on the line. These are clinical trials of new drugs and interventions that could change people’s lives,” stated Stand Up for Science founder Collette Delawalla.
“This seems like an analysis that is highly sensitive to the assumptions made by the analyst,” commented Vishal Patel, a physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He suggested that assuming a banned word would automatically lead to termination might be too simplistic: “This might just be a little too crude of an estimate.”
In response to the report, a Trump administration spokesperson told Scientific American: “The Trump Administration will ensure funding goes toward real science instead of promoting a far-left DEI agenda with things like drag shows in Ecuador and transgender experiments on mice. This rule will bring much-needed transparency to the grantmaking process and ensure taxpayer dollars are spent wisely.”
The proposed OMB rules have been widely criticized by medical and scientific organizations, including the American Heart Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. These groups argue that the rules undermine the agreement between scientific bodies and federal agencies to conduct research based on peer-reviewed science.
“The OMB proposal to permit political appointees to discontinue funding of ongoing grants at any time, without cause, would have serious adverse consequences for the research enterprise and for patients,” the editorial board of the New England Journal of Medicine stated in a recently published article. “Can physician–investigators ethically enroll a patient in a trial if ongoing funding for the trial is uncertain?”
The public comment period for the OMB rules concludes on July 13, with over 28,000 comments submitted so far. If enacted, the new regulations would come into effect by October.
Editor’s Note (6/16/2026): This story is in development and may be updated.
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