An estimated 4 million Americans suffer from a cluster of symptoms that describe fibromyalgia: widespread chronic pain, fatigue and poor sleep. For some people, the disease takes a devastating toll, leaving them unable to work and dependent on others.

In 2004, Lyrica (pregabalin) capsules became the first drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat the disease, reducing pain by up to 30% and improving sleep quality. Since then, millions of Americans have taken the drug and enjoyed improved quality of life.

The treatment’s essential compound was developed in a lab right here at Northwestern by Professor Richard Silverman and visiting scholar Ryszard Andruszkiewicz. A grant from the National Institutes of Health facilitated this discovery.

Now, two significant factors in the discovery of pregabalin — robust public funding and the ability of foreign scholars to do research at American universities — are under threat. Just yesterday, The New York Times reported that the Trump administration has frozen $790 million in funds to Northwestern, sending potentially revolutionary research to a screeching halt. These cuts come as both the Justice and Education Departments investigate antisemitic harassment on campus.

Protecting Jewish students is not just a lazy pretext for these cuts, but a dangerous one. I am not going to belabor this important point, as I’ve seen a number of great pieces on the subject from Jewish peers around the country, but I’d like to point out an obvious fallacy in the Trump administration’s excuse: the ideological motivation for punishing universities was clearly laid out in The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which was published in April 2023 — before Oct. 7 and the subsequent protests. (Although Trump has distanced himself from the policy proposal, several of its key authors serve in high positions in the administration.)

In the foreword of Project 2025’s policy proposal, The Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts outlined the organization’s goal to “to unite the conservative movement and the American people against elite rule and woke culture warriors,” which included plans to strip away the privileges of selective universities. To Roberts and his allies, elite universities — populated by “‘woke ‘diversicrats’” — look down upon the rest of the United States and need to be put in their proper place.

It is here where the administration’s true motivations are revealed: a desire to punish wealthy liberals. I can see how those who align with Project 2025 might spin Northwestern to spur resentment among Americans at large: It’s a school where some students pay a tuition higher than the average U.S. yearly salary to take classes like “Beyond Porn” and “Lana Del Rey: Emotional Landscapes of U.S. Settler Colonialism.” (I do not agree with this perception, and I think the wealthy authors are deeply hypocritical, but this is how Northwestern is framed in such conversations.)

Nevertheless, whether you agree with the merits of Northwestern’s existence or not, it is undeniable that its benefits reach beyond Evanston to help Americans of all political ideologies.

And, in the same vein, when the Trump administration cuts funding from Northwestern, the consequences extend beyond its students and professors. While it is not exactly clear yet which areas of research will suffer the most, these consequences could extend to the patients with Alzheimer’s and their caregivers who could have received lifesaving treatment, or people who could have used an implant for diabetes and obesity treatment, both of which are occurring right now in Northwestern labs with the help of public funds.

There are some impacts of a presidential administration that are easy to measure, good or bad, like how many jobs are created or lost, or how much the GDP has increased or fallen. But some effects are immeasurable, including lost potential.

It’s a great tragedy that we cannot gauge how much we could’ve had, but now won’t — of how many lives would’ve been improved, or saved, by the research done at Northwestern and other universities where funding is now frozen. All I can tell you is that we’ve lost a great deal.

Talia Winiarsky is a Weinberg junior. She can be contacted at [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this op-ed, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected]. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.