The National Institutes of Health are deferring new studies from beginning due to the government shutdown.
"Due to the lapse in government funding ... transactions submitted via the web site may not be processed, and the agency may not be able to respond to inquiries until appropriations are enacted," NIH posted on their official website.
When the government shutdown is over and NIH reopens, the organization will lose an estimated $600 million of budget cuts, according to the Associated Press.
"For the fiscal year that ended Monday, NIH was able to fund only about 16 percent of the grant applications it received, Collins said - down from about 1 in 3 applications funded a decade ago," AP reports. "That's because earlier this year, NIH lost $1.5 billion of its $31 billion budget to automatic spending cuts known as the sequester, after years of budgets that didn't keep up with inflation."
About 75% of NIH's employees (14,700 people) have been furloughed due to the government shut down, CNN reports.
"[NIH] is the place where people have wanted to come when all else has failed," NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins told AP. "It's heartbreaking."
According to CNN, 200 new patients come to the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. However, new patients this week are being told they have to "wait until the government starts up again to begin their trials," according to NIH spokesman John Burklow.
"In fact, six new studies would have started this week that we are deferring," Burklow said.
Of that 200, 30 of them are children and 10 of which are cancer patients, CNN reports.
"If you expected new treatments for cancer or a new universal influenza vaccine or discovering the causes of autism were going to move forward at the maximum it could, that will not be the case," Collins told AP on Tuesday. "This is a profoundly discouraging day."
