Voices: Medical research saved my daughter’s life. We must protect the funding that makes that research possible.

Last April, my daughter’s heart stopped beating for two minutes.

She was two years old and had just suffered a particularly bad epileptic seizure.

I administered CPR and called an ambulance. The next day, doctors at our small, rural hospital sent her home. Briar’s heart was beating, but she was so lethargic that she wouldn’t sit up or walk. She didn’t even want to open her Easter basket.

If her care ended there, Briar might not be alive today. Now, at the age of three, she’s more active than ever.

We owe her life to medical research.

The youngest of our three children, Briar’s medical journey began before birth. In the womb, her heartbeat was erratic; as a newborn, she lost a precipitous amount of weight. At 15 months, she began having seizures. I was afraid to leave her side.

After a cousin told me that her son had been diagnosed with a genetic mutation linked to epilepsy, we got Briar tested. She had the mutation, too.

Our little town of Richfield has no pediatrician or cardiologist. To get Briar the care she needed, my husband and I took her to Salt Lake City, more than three hours away. It was there that we met Dr. Martin Tristani-Firouzi, the pediatric cardiologist who saved Briar’s life.

He couldn’t have done it without research funded by the federal government. But now, federal money for medical research and the progress it fuels are at risk.

Before he met Briar, Dr. Tristani-Firouzi, a scientist and clinician at the University of Utah Health School of Medicine, teamed up with colleagues from Vanderbilt and Northwestern universities to study the role of genetics in children who died suddenly and unexpectedly. By analyzing DNA from more than 200 children, many of whom died before their first birthdays, the scientists discovered two things: a link to genes associated with heart problems, which they anticipated, and genetic mutations that cause epilepsy, which they did not.

Dr. Tristani-Firouzi, who also directs the Utah Center for Genomic Medicine, said the findings changed how he practices medicine. The life-saving research was financed by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the world’s largest funder of biomedical research. Because Congress appropriates money to the NIH each year, the United States is the global leader in medical discovery and innovations.

We need the federal government to continue to support the kind of pioneering medical research conducted by Dr. Tristani-Firouzi and other scientists across the country, to fund studies that could identify new treatments and even cures for diseases like cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, Parkinson’s and, yes, epilepsy, among others.

Because of his research, Dr. Tristani-Firouzi knew what to look for when he met Briar in May 2024. At that time, he placed a tiny device called a loop recorder beneath the skin in Briar’s chest to monitor her heart rhythms. Eleven months later, the loop recorder alerted Dr. Tristani-Firouzi that Briar’s heart had stopped beating for two full minutes—and that it continued to stop for shorter periods after that. As soon as we brought her home from our local hospital, he told us to take her to Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake, a larger facility where he would meet us that night.

The next day, April 27, 2025, a pediatric heart surgeon sewed a pacemaker onto Briar’s heart. (She’s too small for it to be implanted into the heart through a vein.) The pacemaker is designed to jumpstart her heart if it stops beating and to keep its rhythm normal. Without it, another seizure could be fatal.

The pacemaker has done more than protect Briar’s heart; it gave her a new life. For the first time since her seizures began, Briar started to talk and play. She has a newfound energy and can keep up with her older sister and brother, attend pre-school and make friends. She has far fewer seizures than she did before, and the ones she does have are shorter and less intense. And I no longer live in constant fear that she will suddenly die.

Now, I am pregnant with our fourth child, a boy. Genetic testing shows that he carries the same dominant genetic mutation as Briar. If he has seizures, it’s likely that he’ll also need a pacemaker.

Previously, this would have frightened me. But the medical research conducted by Dr. Tristani-Firouzi and his colleagues saved one of my children, and I’m confident it can do so for another. That research — and Briar’s life — demonstrate just how critical federal support is to scientists, doctors and, especially, the patients they help.

Scientists are seeking new treatments and cures for many diseases, common and rare. Talk to friends, neighbors and policymakers about medical research. The next discovery could help someone you love.

Lateishia Curtis lives in Richfield, Utah, with her husband and their three children.

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