‘We Denisent’: NIH employees protest against the Trump policy that ‘damages the health of Americans’ -KFF Health News

Hundreds of employees at the National Institutes of Health On Monday, openly protested against the cuts of the Trump administration against the agency and the consequences for human lives, writing in a highly formulated letter that its actions cause ‘a dramatic reduction of life-saving research’.

In one June 9 Letter At the NIH director Jay Bhattacharya, nih employees said they “felt forced to speak when our leadership prioritizes political momentum over human security and loyal stewardship of public resources.”

“For staff in the National Institutes of Health (NIH), we do not agree for the policy of the administration that undermines NIH mission, waste public resources and harm the health of Americans and people around the world,” they said.

The letter is an extraordinary reprimand of the actions of the Trump government against the NIH, including: the termination of hundreds of subsidies financing scientific and biomedical research; firm more than 1,000 employees this year; And switching to billions in funds to partner institutions abroad, a relocation that current and former NIH employees say that research into rare cancers and infectious diseases will harm, as well as research is to minimize tobacco use and related chronic diseases, in addition to other areas.

Some NIH employees publicly signed their names and openly dared to challenge a president who tried to clear the employees of employees who he regards him as unfaithful. Others drew anonymously.

“It is about the damage that this policy has in the field of research participants and American public health and global public health,” said Jenna Norton, who works at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, one of the 27 institutions of NIH. “There are research participants who decide generously to donate their time and literal pieces of their bodies, with the understanding that that service will help to promote diseases with which they live and the next person who will help with that disease.”

“This policy prevents us from the promise we have made to them, fulfilling the dedication they have made, fulfilling them, and jeopardizing them,” she said.

The workers wrote that they hope that Bhattacharya welcomes their criticism, in view of his Believes to give priority to “academic freedom” And to respect different opinions as a leader of the NIH, who is located in Bethesda, Maryland. The authors called it the “Bethesda statement”-a game about the controversial “Great Barrington statement” that Bhattacharya co-author was during the COVID-19 Pandemie.

Bhattacharya’s statement argued for locking measures and suggested that widespread immunity against COVID could be achieved by enabling healthy people to become infected with the virus and only to set protective measures for medically vulnerable people. It was then criticized by Francis Collins, the then director of the NIH, who called Bhattacharya and his co-authors “Fringe Epidemiologists,” ” According to e -mails The American Institute for Economic Research obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.

In their letter, NIH employees demanded that Bhattacharya recovered subsidies that were “delayed or terminated for political reasons.” These subsidies have financed a series of projects, including those who tackle Alzheimer’s disease, ways to stimulate vaccination rates and efforts to combat health differences or wrong information about health.

“Academic freedom may not be applied selectively based on political ideology. To achieve political goals, NIH has focused on several universities with a random subsidy, freezing for continuous research and blankets means prices, regardless of the quality, progress or impact of science,” wrote NIH employees.

The financing endings, they said, “throw years of hard work and millions of dollars away”, “risk participant health” and “damaged hard -earned public trust, contrary to your declared goal of improving trust in NIH.”

In an e -mail commentary, Bhattacharya said: “The statement of Bethesda has some fundamental misconceptions about the policy directions that the NIH has taken in recent months, including the continuous support of the NIH for international cooperation. Nevertheless, respectful different opinion in science is productive. We all want the NIH.”

The budget of almost $ 48 billion of the NIH makes the world’s largest public financier of scientific research. The work has led to countless scientific discoveries that have contributed to improving health and saving lives around the world. But it has not been without controversies, including authorities of Examination misconduct And Not effectively monitoring Grant Awards and the related research.

Researchers and some states have sued NIH and HHS due to the cuts. A statement of 3 April by NIH officer Michelle Bulls said that Rachel Riley, a senior adviser at HHS, who is part of the Ministry of Government Efficiency created by Executive Order, provided NIH officials of subsidies and language for termination. Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, led Doge until May.

Norton has worked at the NIH for about ten years as a federal employee or contractor. She said that the policy of the current government “is” absolutely unethical and most likely illegal “, with a series of developments in recent months. They include the early termination of studies and the endangering of participating patients because they had to stop taking medication abruptly, and research should mean that mainly or excluding participants would recruit from minority races and ethnic groups, which are historically under -represented in medical research.

“They say doing studies exclusively to black Americans to try to develop interventions that work for that population, or interventions that are culturally tailored to Spanish Latino populations-that that kind of research cannot continue,” said Norton. “And in fact, studies that are over-recruiting of white people are allowed to continue.”

The NIH employees also demanded that Bhattacharya recovered employees who were dismissed under recent mass brushes and allowing research that is being done in collaboration with institutions abroad “without disruption”. The NIH works together with organizations around the world to combat major public health problems, including types of cancer, tobacco -related diseases and HIV.

In addition to dismissing probation workers, NIH has fired 1200 officials as part of a rapid “reduction of violence” at federal health authorities. During a town hall meeting of 19 May with NIH Staff, of which a recording was obtained by KFF Health News, Bhattacharya said that the decisions about Rif’s “made before I arrived here. I actually have no transparency in how those decisions were made.”

He started at NIH on April 1, the day that many employees were told at NIH and other agencies that they were fired. Other employees have been dismissed since Bhattacharya took over the helm – almost all the communication staff of the National Cancer Institute were fired at the beginning of May, three former employees told KFF Health News.

The letter is the last salvo in a growing movement of scientists and others against the actions of the Trump government. In addition to personal protests outside the HHS head office and elsewhere, some former employees organize patients to participate.

Peter Garrett, who led the communication work of the National Cancer Institute, has created a non -profit organization of the advocacy called Patient Action for Cancer Research. The goal is to involve patients in the conversation and the federal financing and science policy, “he said in an interview.

His group wants patients and their family members to express how federal cancer investigation influences them immediately, he said – a “guerrilla lobby” effort to fully set the issue for members of the congress. Garrett said he retired early at the cancer institute because of concern about political interference.

Career officers work routinely among both Republican and Democratic presidents. It is par for the course for their priorities and assignments to evolve when a new president, cabinet secretaries and other political initiates take over. Usually those changes occur without much protest.

This time, employees said that the revolution and damage to the NIH are so extensive that they thought they had no choice but to protest.

In 11 years at Nih, Norton said: “I’ve never seen anything that comes somewhere.”

In the letter of 9 June, the employees said: “Many have imposed these concerns on NIH leadership, but we remain under pressure to take harmful measures.”

“It’s not about our jobs,” said a NIH employee who signed the letter anonymously. “It’s about humanity. It’s about the future.”

Senior Correspondent Arthur Allen has contributed to this report.

We would like to speak with the current and former staff of the Ministry of Health and Human Services of his component agencies who believe that the public should understand the impact of what is happening within federal health bureaucracy. Send KFF Health News over signal on (415) 519-8778 or Contact us here.