"We are in a very, very critical situation," says Jorge Geffner, director of the Institute for Biomedical Research in Retroviruses and AIDS (INBIRS) in Buenos Aires. He notes that the Innovation, Science and Technology Secretariat has a budget that is one-third lower than last year, severely impacting their capacity and threatening the very existence of scientific endeavors that once thrived in Argentina. Researchers are left to grapple with dwindling resources and support, leading to potentially devastating consequences for the scientific community and innovation in the country.