Trump Administration stops research to help babies with heart defects

For James Antaki, a professor of biomedical engineering at Cornell University, the scholarship of 6.7 million US dollars meant that babies were saved. From the team in Cornell, the production and testing of Pediaslow, a device, which was awarded by the Defense Ministry on March 30, increase the blood flow in infants with heart defects.

A week later that changed.

On April 8, the Ministry of Defense sent a stop work command on April 8, in which he informed him that his team would not get the money that is to be distributed over four years. Three decades of research is now at risk, and Antaki said he had no idea why the government broke off the financing.

“I have the feeling that it is my vocation in life to complete this project,” he said on Friday in his first news interview since the financing. “Once a week I do this mental process of” is it time to give up? “But it is not my privilege to give up.”

Neither the Ministry of Defense nor the White House's press office answered inquiries about comments.

Antaki is one of hundreds, if not thousands of academics nationwide, who have lost funding in various areas since President Donald Trump, since a mix of new execution commands that can restrict the government's money and the comprehensive cancellations of the granting of Elon Musk limit the Ministry of Government Efficiency of Elon Musk.

Each of 100 babies in the USA is born with heart defects, and about a quarter of them operated on in their first year or other procedures to survive, according to the centers for the control and prevention of diseases. It is estimated worldwide that 240,000 babies die from congenital birth defects within their first 28 days.

The heart of a child is about the size of a big walnut. If a baby is born with a hole between the chambers of heart, it can be a life -threatening state. The creation of Antakis is an AA battery device that uses a rotating propeller on magnets to increase blood circulation and to help them survive operations or to live with their family at home until a donation heart is available.

The new financing round Antaki would have supported further tests of the prototype, including the placement of an animal to ensure that it does not harm people, and the completion of the mountain of paperwork that is necessary to move through the regulation process of the Food and Drug Administration.

The device has received several grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Ministry of Defense over the years, Antaki said.

Antaki started working on technology in 2003. He already developed a similar technology for adults at the University of Pittsburgh when the National Institutes of Health made a call for a suggestions for a pediatric heart assistant system.

He had already tried to interest private companies in a pediatric device without success. They may have rejected, he speculates because the market for medical equipment for children is smaller than for adults.

After Antaki arrived in Cornell in 2018, he secured the research financing of the Ministry of Defense to keep the project in motion. In June last year he submitted a 300-page proposal for the next cash infusion he needed, and the Ministry of Defense informed his team in March that it was approved before he reversed the course in April, he said.

A copy of the Order of Stop Work, which was checked by NBC News, gives no reason why the government canceled the scholarship beyond that it was “based on the administration”.

Dr. Evan Zahn, a pediatric interventional cardiologist at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, who is not involved in Pediaflow, said that the cut of the financing for Antaki's research is a step backwards for the health care of children, since only a few commercially available solutions for babies with heart defects are available.

“The technology that was developed especially for our children, especially for babies across the board, is urgently needed. So it is a real loss that financing for something like this is,” said Zahn.

If the financing is not restored within 90 days, Antaki and his team have to take laboratory and doctoral students. The students have to change their research focus.

In the great scheme of what the government is financing, he said: “It is a small amount of money that could do so much good for so many people, and it's just the thing. It only speaks for itself.”