On June 20th, a colleague published an opinion article in which he stated that You cannot schedule the lizard’s gift.[1] He was referring to the fact that the blockbuster diabetes and weight loss drugs in the GLP-1 family owe their origins to a molecule that a curious physician scientist named John Eng isolated from lizard’s venom nearly 30 years ago. These exploratory studies cost a small amount of money and were funded by American taxpayers. GLP-1s are, therefore, a gift from the lizards.
The advent of GLP-1 drugs is one of many examples of how curiosity-driven investigations, persistence and deep innovation create new markets and disrupt existing ones. The long and winding discovery path that started as lizard venom was undoubtedly nonlinear and for many decades not profit-generating. Rather, discovery work like this is risky, slow, and uncertain. No one can know when - or even if - there will be a product emerging. Hence, you cannot schedule the lizard’s gift. And because there was no obvious product when Dr. Eng was extracting molecules from the lizard’s venom, the “early stage” exploratory work would certainly not have been of interest to a profit-seeking business: the work only moved forward because of the modest public investment that eventually led to its enormous impact and success.
The GLP-1 gift from the lizard is not a unique story. Curiosity-driven inquiry has produced a long chain of breakthroughs that ordinary people use every day, often without realizing where they came from: Viagra [2], Keytruda, Humira, Eliquis, MRI technology, the internet, GPS, mRNA vaccine platforms, synthetic human insulin, antibiotics, cures for cancer, and countless other advances in medicine and technology.
These examples above matter not only because they improve health and quality of life, but because they show why federal research funding is such an incredible bargain for taxpayers. The government does not need to predict - and in fact, cannot predict - which specific project will lead to the next blockbuster drug. It only needs to support the kind of basic research that makes such discoveries possible. Indeed, this is a smart public investment because the costs are relatively small, while the potential future returns can be enormous. Moreover, immediate returns include jobs and economic growth in the scientific sector.
A single federal grant may fund a scientist’s work for a few years, but the knowledge created by that grant can ripple outward for decades. It can lead to new drugs, new medical devices, new industries, and new jobs. It can reduce the burden of chronic disease, lower health-care spending, and improve productivity across the economy. In that sense, science funding is not just an expense item on a federal budget. It is part of the infrastructure of modern life, no less important than roads, bridges, or electricity.
This is why the question should not be whether every federally funded project will produce commercial success. Most will not. The real question is whether the nation is willing to support the foundational work that is needed. While the free market is excellent at turning mature ideas into products, the role of public funding remains a critical component of early-stage research that will serve as the basis for the next great breakthrough.
And we in science need the public’s help right now to ensure that public funding continues so that the lizard equivalents of today will give society the gifts of tomorrow. In short, we need everyone to write a comment to oppose the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) proposed rule on Federal Financial Assistance. These comments are due on Monday, July 13, and I’m asking each of you to spend the weekend talking with your nonscience connections, including friends, family, and neighbors, to ask them to submit their comments opposing the proposed rule.
For taxpayers, the return on this investment is unusually strong. The benefits are shared broadly: patients gain new treatments, families gain more years of healthy life, businesses gain new technologies, and the economy gains innovation that fuels long-term growth. Even when a particular project does not produce the result anyone hoped for, the process itself still expands knowledge. In science, negative results can still be useful results, because they prevent others from repeating the same dead ends. That means public research funding generates value not only through breakthroughs, but also through the steady accumulation of knowledge that makes future breakthroughs more likely.
That is why the current debate over federal research policy matters so much. The public has a real stake in how these decisions are made, because rules that affect federal research funding can shape what kinds of science are possible in the first place. If the government makes it harder to support exploratory work or adds unnecessary barriers to the grants that sustain basic science, the consequences will not always be immediate or visible. But over time, the nation will feel them in fewer discoveries, fewer treatments, and fewer opportunities for American innovation.
For these reasons, the OMB proposed rule will be disastrous for the U.S. It is a long and comprehensive proposal that has several relevant sections seeking to regulate how federal research funds are awarded, evaluated, and administered.
Please tell your friends and family that anyone can submit comments expressing concerns and opposition. In fact, We the People have enormous power because public comments can explain the real-world impact of a policy in our own words. Ask your friends and family to tell their stories and submit these as comments. Here are some guidelines to help them to do this:
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They might be wondering what the relevant sections are. The APS has done a great job of summarizing these. There are good descriptions and easy input boxes that link the essence of the proposed regulation. I put some examples below but help members of your circle of nonscientists recognize that if these comments are copied and pasted, their comment will be lumped together with all other similar copy and paste comments and will only count as 1 comment in the eyes of OMB. So, they can use these ideas to inspire their own personalized comments.
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Section 2 CFR 200.204 or 200.205 As a taxpayer, I want federal research proposals to be reviewed on the basis of scientific merit by qualified subject matter experts. While I want federal research money to be protected from waste, fraud and abuse, funding decisions should not be influenced by political considerations unrelated to the quality, feasibility, or potential impact of the research.
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For Section 2CFR 200.205: Federal research policy affects real people. For example, share the story of a friend or family member who has been helped by a new treatment or drug therapy. We all know someone who has lived longer or better thanks to such developments – your tax dollars enabled the foundational research for these!
The larger point is simple: federal research funding is not a luxury, and it is not a gift to scientists. It is a public strategy for producing knowledge, health, and economic growth that markets alone will not reliably provide. The lizard’s gift, like so many other scientific gifts before it, reminds us that the future cannot be scheduled. But it can be enabled. And one of the best ways to enable it is to keep federal science funding strong, flexible, and open to the unexpected.
-Karen G. Fleming
BPS President
[1] Jeff Coller, “The Science that Turned Lizard’s Venom into GLP-1s is Under Attack” New York Times, June 20, 2026, https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/20/opinion/glp1-research-science-funding.html?unlocked_article_code=1.rlA.Yx7p.4aNTb2aTL8QX&smid=url-share Accessed 7 Jul 2026.
[2] The drug known as Viagra was technically identified by Pfizer. It was a heart drug lead they were developing as a result of many years of public-sector, federally funded foundational research on signaling molecules in the cardiovascular system. Even more remarkable is the fact that the lizard’s gift known as Viagra was serendipitously discovered as a side effect of Pfizer’s failed heart drug.